I’m constantly reminded that nostalgia is a bitch. Case in point, every game on this list is 10 years old or more.
30 – The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Year Released: 2006 | Platform: Nintendo Gamecube
The last Gamecube Zelda game, or the first Wii Zelda game, depending on your perspective. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was the ‘realistic’ Zelda game we were all clamouring for back in the early 00’s. See, in 2002, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker was released with a gorgeous, emotive cel-shaded art style that looked amazing. But all us edgy teenagers rebelled against it, calling it a baby game for babies. We wanted the dark and gritty browns that were so pervasive across all video games at the time.
In Twilight Princess, Link and Midna embark on an adventure to save the world from an encroaching darkness. With Link having the ability to transform into a wolf, and Midna having an ethereal hand to overcome… well, pretty much anything. Twilight Princess was the real follow-up to Ocarina of Time that fans at the time wanted, and while Wind Waker‘s art style has aged MUCH better than Twilight Princess has, the dark fantasy atmosphere did a lot to entertain my teenage brain.
29 – Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Year Released: 2005 | Platform: Nintendo Gamecube
Intelligent Systems first foray for Fire Emblem into the world of 3D was one of my favourite experiences. From centering the story not on a little lord trying to raise an army, but instead on a common man, Ike, who is thrust into a leadership role when the continent is embroiled in war, and his father Greil, the leader of the Greil Mercenaries, is cut down in front of him.
The moment that really sealed Path of Radiance into the upper echelon of video games, is the chapter that happens immediately after Greil dies. Two of your teammates abandon ship, and you’re left to defend the princess against a seemingly never ending onslaught of enemy forces. The despair and hopelessness I felt as a young lad, seeing more and more enemy reinforcements swarm in from all directions, each of my young characters desperately holding their choke points, was a formative gaming moment for me.
Beyond that single chapter, Path of Radiance also grapples with themes of racism and prejudice between the humans and the Laguz, a race of people who can transform into beasts. As most Fire Emblem games, there are politics in play, but the themes feel well executed and personal, as Ike struggles against a mighty empire, hell-bent on Laguz genocide.
28 – Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Year Released: 2007 | Platform: Nintendo Wii (multi-platform)
Guitar Hero 3 sits at number 28 on my top video games of all time list, simply for the sheer number of hours played. Guitar Hero 3 was the only guitar rythm game that I owned for a long time, and one of my friends bragged that he could beat every song on expert, so, naturally, I had to do at least the same.
It turns out he was lying at the time. While we were teenagers, neither of us managed Through The Fire and Flames (although he did send me a video of him accomplishing that feat almost a decade later), but Guitar Hero 3 was the game that forged my rhythm fingers, and trained me to be a video game guitar expert.
27 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Year Released: 2013 | Platform: Nintendo 3DS
You’ll find A Link to the Past near the very top of the overall list, but A Link Between Worlds holds a special place in my heart. Revisiting that version of Hyrule nearly 20 years later was a blast, but what made this even better was that I just so happened to have a day off work on the day this game released. I picked it up from the mall the moment it opened, then went home and played through the entire game, start to finish, in essentially one sitting. I don’t think I have ever done that before, and I had a phenomenal time doing it here.
What makes A Link Between Worlds unique was the Zelda’s team first foray into a more open-world design. Instead of getting a new item in the middle of a dungeon, you can rent items from Ravio, and tackle the dungeons in almost any order. Many of the puzzles of A Link Between Worlds has you slipping between cracks in the walls, and between the light world of Hyrule, and the dark world of Lorule.
Listen, I could go on, but A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic Zelda game, and perhaps it’s boosted by my love of a Link to the Past. But hey, this is a subjective list, what do you want from me?
26 – Stardew Valley
Year Released: 2016 | Platform: PC
Growing up, I remember ranting to my sister about how much I disliked Harvest Moon 64. It was boring, tedious, and obtuse. Why would anyone choose to play Harvest Moon?, I’d cry. “Why did you play it?” she asked me. At the time, I answered it’s because it was my personal ethos at the time to beat every game I owned. After all, I don’t get many games, so I need to make the most of the games I have. She rewarded me with buying Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, taunting me to either give up my ethos, or be miserable in my attempt.
While Harvest Moon wasn’t the game that broke my ethos, it did lay the groundwork for Stardew Valley, the indie PC darling that has absolutely taken over my family. It started with just me playing it, then I got my wife into it. We both had 100 hours into each of our farms, then we started a new multi-player farm. Then my mom came to visit, and she tried it, and now she has dozens of farms, all well beyond Year 3. Now my brother has gotten into it, including the mods, specifically Stardew Valley Expanded
Stardew Valley itself is a cross between a farming simulator, a dungeon dive, and a dating simulator. Obviously, it’s more than the sum of its parts, as it’s utterly charming, and the kind of game that demands “just one more day” out of you, despite it already being 2:30 in the morning, and you need to work your real job at 7am.
25 – Star Fox 64
Year Released: 1997 | Platform: Nintendo 64
In my honest, spicy opinion, Star Fox 64 was the first and last good Star Fox game. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to follow up on this on rails shooter. I mostly enjoyed Star Fox Command with it’s multiple endings, and Star Fox Assault, despite the annoying walking Arwing missions, but neither really managed to capture the magic that was Star Fox 64.
Star Fox, despite being on-rails, manages to get my heart pumping, every time I revisit this classic. The characters are all unique with their quips, alternating between being helpful and needing to be rescued, crafting the brotherhood forged in battle feeling. The levels all feel unique and intresting, many with several paths to discover, Star Fox 64 is one of my favourite games on the Nintendo 64, and is actually one that I make a point of replaying year after year after year.
24 – Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
Year Released: 2003 | Platform: Game Boy Advance
The start of the Mario & Luigi series was magical. I remember standing in a mall, debating between Mario & Luigi: Super Star Saga, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age. In the end, I’m glad I made the choice that I did (if only because I hadn’t played Golden Sun at that point yet), Mario & Luigi: Super Star Saga is a wacky and charming adventure through the bean kingdom to try and get Princess Peach’s voice back. It uses an active battle system, mapping Mario and Luigi to the A and B buttons respectively, encouraging you to press a button during an attack to get some extra damage, or, dodge attacks from enemies when timed correctly.
It was a bright, colouful, and fresh take on RPGs, and I adored this game. I haven’t enjoyed anything else in the Mario & Luigi series as much as this entry, but, this one, I wholeheartedly recommend.
23 – Super Mario Bros. 3
Year Released: 1993 | Platform: SNES
Alright, before all you NES fans get mad at me, for me, Super Mario Bros 3 was a part of the Mario All Stars collection on the SNES, and that’s where I experienced it, so this is the proper verion of Super Mario Bros. 3, for me.
It’s great. The levels are unique and can be challenging, the music is excellent, and the SNES sprite work is brilliant. SMB3 is one of the best platformers of all time, there’s no question there. I guess, the only question becomes, why are there 22 games above it?
Well, there are only 3 platformers above it, and each one is a special, nostalgic entry for me. Perhaps I’m not fair, but hey, neither is life.
22 – Heroes of Might and Magic III
Year Released: 2000 | Platform: PC
Goodness, just looking at this screenshot makes me want to drop writing for the night and start playing HoMM3
My earliest memories of HoMM3 involve hot seat with two other boys, huddled around their dads Windows 95 PC. In Heroes of Might and Magic III, you play as heroes, as they scour the lands surrounding their castle, recruiting creatures to fight in their armies, building up the castles under their control, and pillaging the land for resources. Another one of those “just one more turn” games that will literally keep you at your computer until the sun comes up, it’s hard to put into words as to just what makes Heroes 3 SO SATISFYING.
When your hero encounters a mob on the overworld, or another hero, or even another castle, the scene shifts to a 2d hex map where a turn based battle takes place. In order of speed, each of the creatures under your control move, and will do damage, with many having special abilities, such as flying, unlimited counter attacks, ranged attacks, and more. Whichever side manages to eradicate the other first, wins!
Most of the campaigns will have you trying to wipe out all of your opponents, or searching for various relics to outfit your heroes with. On and on the game goes, your power and empire slowly growing with you, until you achieve victory, and you start again from 0 on another map. It may seem anti-climatic, but again, it’s SO SATISFYING TO PLAY.
Heroes of Might and Magic represent hundreds of hours across various play-throughs. It’s the best in the series, and it’s not even close.
21 – Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Year Released: 2004 | Platform: Game Boy Advance
My first Fire Emblem. I don’t think Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is particularly well revered within the community, but for me, it’s the bar against which all other Fire Emblem games are measured. It’s fairly short, only 20 chapters long (although the story splits in the middle of the game, making a replay much more interesting), and pretty straightforward. I can’t help but be led by my baises here. This is one of the few games that I completed 100%. Getting every support conversation for every character made me fall in love with each and every one of them. While not all support convos were created equal, this is the game that made me love the Fire Emblem series! I can’t help but have it elevated in my top games of all time list!
I’ve been a fan of Level 99 Games for a while now. From Millennium Blades toBullet❤️, and all of its expansions, I really dig how unique every game of theirs I’ve played has been. So when I saw Argent: The Consortium in a math trade earlier this year, I hopped on it, and was delighted to receive it. While I am a big fan of the early 90’s anime and video game theme from Millennium Blades, and adore the anime aesthetic that all of Level 99 Games, my friends in my game group are less enthusiastic, which is one of the reasons it took so long for me to get Argent: The Consortium to my table.
The other reason it took so long for Argent to come out, is that it looks incredibly dense. Twice I opened the rulebook, started reading the rules, and immediately felt too tired and packed the game away again. I don’t know what it is about Argent, but the rulebook does not feel welcoming.
For our first game, we stuck with the “recommended beginner’s setup,” since it was our first go, but even with training wheels on, Argent: The Consortium showed off its teeth.
A 3 player game has 8 locations for you to put your workers, with each of those locations having between 3 and 5 spots. On your turn, you can take a fast action if you wish, then take one main action, which can consist of placing a mage on a spot, casting a spell, or using a supporter or treasure. If you don’t want to do any of those, there are also some bell tower cards you can take instead, which act as the timer for the round. The moment the last bell tower card is taken, the round ends.
On the surface, Argent is just a worker placement game. You put your mages (workers) out on various locations to gather resources, gain spells, or position yourself for the endgame scoring. Pretty standard stuff. Except, there’s a lot of interaction, and not even just the standard worker placement of interaction that comes from taking the spot that someone else really wanted. Argent: The Consortium has a lot of direct player interaction as players cast spells to blast opposing mages off the board, and even some that let you shift your opponents workers around after they’ve been placed. That one twist, being able to knock, vanquish, or blast someone else’s carefully placed worker, isn’t just cute. It’s the heartbeat of the whole design. The worker placement here isn’t just about action efficiency; it’s about tempo, timing, and disruption.
There are 5 different types of mages you can recruit, each with its own ability. The red mages can wound other mages, kicking them out and taking their spot, and sending them to the infirmary, giving its owner a paltry benefit. The green mages are immune to wounds, the purple mages can be placed as a fast action, the black mages can be placed after you cast a non-fast spell, and so on. Each of these effects seem pretty simple on their own, but when your turn comes around, you’ll find yourself going down a flowchart in your head of which worker to place first. Perhaps you place a defensive one down to lock the spot you need the most, or you hold back your offensive mages so you can punish one of your foolhardy opponents. Not only picking a location is a tough choice, but trying to figure out which worker to use compounds that decision.
The goal of the game, is to accrue the most votes of the Consortium, a group of administrators, each valuing something different. 2 are open information to the whole table, but the other 10 are face down. While each player does get to peek at one each at the start, you’ll be blind as to what resource the other 9 each value. At the end of the game, each of those cards are flipped up, and whomever has the most of whatever criteria they ask for, wins their vote. The player with the most votes, wins the whole game.
Of course, there are ways to earn more marks, letting you peek at more cards. Knowledge is power, and focusing your efforts into the actions that will ultimately earn you a vote is the way to win the game. Sometimes you can glean from your opponents as they stockpile a specific resource, what they might know, but you can’t always be sure. And even if you do follow them, now they have a head start on you.
Argent: The Consortium is flush with variability, even in just the base game. 18 council votes mix up the end game, 6 double-sided player boards, each with their own player ability. 30 spell cards vary the abilities you can accrue, 15 double-sided university tiles ensure the actions you take are different in every game. But with all this variability, comes table bloat. As you can see in the pictures, it’s a massive table hog. The board is just a modular cluster of cardboard tiles, but each player needs to have room for their player board, and room off to the side to hold their spells, vault cards, and supporters. Argent has an almost comical abundance of “stuff”, and that’s not even counting any of the content that comes in the expansions.
Which kind of brings me to my main thought of this review. Argent: The Consortium is just a worker placement game. There’s no flashy gimmicks or crazy twists to the mechanism. It’s not mixing other mechanics to make a game that feels wholly unique. There’s no flash or pizzazz, and it isn’t the kind of game that stands out on a table that makes people stop and ask “what’s THAT game!?”. But this game obviously has legs. It has replayability out the ying-yang, and that’s something that a lot of modern games seem to lack. If you’re tired of modern games dazzling you with their fancy pants productions and really exciting and interesting first play, but lack of replayability, well then I hold up Argent as the solution to those woes.
Is Argent: The Consortium perfect? No. A few things may rub players the wrong way. For one, despite all the flashy magic theming, Argent is still fundamentally a Euro about collecting and converting resources. If you came here for wild spell-slinging battles, you’ll find yourself instead managing mana crystals and counting up influence points. For another, some people will find the overabundance of options paralyzing. On your turn, you may have up to 20 options to choose from. Some will balk at how mean and interactive it can be, since one well-timed action can completely upend your plans. All those paralyzing options mean that the game can feel slow to play, especially with new or AP prone players.
But at it’s best, Argent is a dazzling mess of interaction and tension. It’s a Euro with resource management at its core, yet it smuggles in drama and intrigue that most Euros can only dream about. Every game feels distinct, every set up is a whole new puzzle. It’s the kind of game where you might feel like you’re dead last, but in a dramatic reveal at the end, scrape together just enough votes to edge out the victory.
Argent: The Consortium is a gem. It’s one of the most interesting, interactive, and clever worker placement games I’ve played in a very long time. It’s not the easiest thing to get on the table or convince normies to play, but it’s worth the effort every time. If you love worker placement, love interactive games, and don’t mind a bit of magical cruelty, Argent: The Consortium, despite being 10 years old, might end up being your new favourite too.
I think this is the point in the list where I’m starting to list games that I can get a little obsessive over. Either a rougelike that hooks me and makes me dive deep, or just a fantastic adventure in the case of Zelda and Donkey Kong. There are times where any of these games could be higher on a certian day, but hey. On the day that I made this list, this is where the chips fell.
40 – Crypt of the NecroDancer
Year Released: 2015 | Platform: PC
There aren’t many rhythm games that I enjoy, but Crypt of the NecroDancer is one of them. Another roguelike with plenty of weapons, characters, and biomes to discover and explore. What makes Crypt of the Necrodancer unique is that the entire engine of the game is tied to a beat. Every move or action for both you and the monsters happens on a beat. If you can keep up with the song, you’ll rack up a sweet multiplier and start raking in the gold.
This system is slightly panic educing, as you need to move your character around the map, position yourself so you can damage the enemies while not falling into any other traps, all while having milliseconds to decide on your next move. I find it really comical when I’m having a great run, but I suddenly fall off the beat, then get dogpiled into oblivion.
Despite the fact that I can’t keep a beat to save my life, I ended up really enjoying Crypt of the NecroDancer. It was perfectly engaging, fun, and frenetic enough to capture my attention and not let go.
39 – Final Fantasy V
Year Released: 1992 | Platform: SNES
This one is a bit of a cheat. I realized while putting this list together that I had a game repeated twice, so I needed to fill a gap. Thankfully, in the time between creating this list and posting it, I’ve embarked on my Final Fantasy Project, and one of the absolute highlights so far has been Final Fantasy V.
Final Fantasy X was already featured further back, and you’ll see Final Fantasy IVin a future post, but Final Fantasy V was the first new (to me) Final Fantasy that really made me smile. The job system on display here was just so much fun to explore, and unlike Final Fantasy III, I didn’t feel punished for swapping jobs. Instead, near the end of the game when I had several jobs mastered, I was rewarded with some ultra powerful stacking abilities that just made me feel so excited to run into battle.
I know there are more depths to plumb with this system than what I did in my first play through, and if I’m being honest, Final Fantasy V is so far the FF game that I’m most likely to go back and replay once I’m done, just because that system is so varied. I can also see how the job system here was developed into the Tactics series, which are some games that I absolutely love.
38 – The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Year Released: 2004 | Platform: Gameboy Advance
Alright, you’re gonna start seeing a lot of Legend of Zelda as we move up this list. It, and Pokemon have been my two favourite franchises since I was a little kid, so, there’s quite a lot of affinity built up here.
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap takes Link’s iconic toque and turns it into an intrepid sidekick. The titular Minish are a race of miniscule elves, and Link is able to grow and shrink to interact with the Minish’s world. Nintendo did a fantastic job of imbuing the Minish point of view with a ton of charm, with things like, riding a lilly pad over a lake by using a jar that blows wind. The graphics are really bright and each of the biomes have their own distinct identity, and the music is phenomenal.
37 – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Year Released: 2023 | Platform: Nintendo Switch
I’m actually using this entry to represent both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, which might be silly, but it’s my blog, so I’ll do what I want.
I always try to go into Zelda games blind. I purposefully avoid reviews, previews, designer discussions, everything. I want to discover the game on my own. I also vividly remember when Breath of the Wild was first announced in 2013, then was delayed at least twice, much to my dismay. But when I finally launched Breath of the Wild on my brand new Nintendo Switch in 2017, I was hooked. I loved the open world, free-flowing gameplay, and the discovery that came from… literally everything. I would launch the game, set my marker on a point just across a small field, and then two hours later I’d be turning my game off, not having reached that marker. That feeling of discovery gave me such joy that I played it every moment I could for three months straight.
I was a bit disappointed that the traditional big puzzle solving dungeons were pushed to the side in favour of the 120 shrines and 4 divine beasts, but I still recognized that Breath of the Wild was a monumental achievement.
Then Nintendo did it again with Tears of the Kingdom. The base map of Hyrule looks the same, but it feels like everything has been shuffled. In addition to shuffling the main map, to my full surprise when I discovered it, there’s a whole second map in the underworld. While that map is fairly barren, it’s not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination. Also, the real trick for Tears of the Kingdom is the ability to build all kinds of machinations. I don’t really have the imagination necessary to really dive deep into this mechanic, but seeing what others have built and seeing how the physics of the world react to creative problem-solving has been an incredible experience.
36 – Slice & Dice
Year Released: 2021 | Platform: Itch.io, PC, Mobile
There’s something special about playing a game a lot when it’s in early access, or it’s 1.0 release, then coming back to it a few years later and experiencing all the updates and upgrades all at once. That’s been my experience with Slice & Dice, and it is wonderful. I get all this new content, but I also don’t have to go through the effort of learning a whole new roguelike system.
Slice & Dice is a rogue like game where you play a team of 5 heroes, as they crawl through a series of battles. Each hero is represented by a die, and on each turn, you roll those die and apply their effects. From generic hits, to ranged attacks, to cleave attacks, to cruel attacks (x2 to enemies with less than half health), to so many more, your goal is simply to destroy your enemies before they do the same to you. After each enounter one of your characters will level up, or, you’ll be given a new piece of gear to modify one of your chracters. With over 100 heroes and much more loot to pick from, each run feels different, and the feeling of power you get when you utterly break the final boss over your knee is addicting.
There’s a reason why this game never gets uninstalled from my phone.
35 – Tetris
Year Released: 1989 | Platform: Anything with a screen
While the screenshot is from Tetris: Effect, this entry stands in for all the Tetrises out there. It’s a classic exciting puzzle game that has endured the test of time, and it also kind of served as a benchmark for me as a gamer. My mom and I used to play The New Tetris on the Nintendo 64, and she’d whoop my butt up and down the block. Until I got my first job, and with my first paycheque, bought a platnium GameCube and Tetris Worlds, and actually sat down and practised this game, until I finally surpassed her.
I also toyed with the idea of putting Dr. Mario World in this spot, as I absolutely loved that mobile game, to the point where I was ranked in the top 100 players. But considering that it’s a discontinued live service game that you can’t play anymore, I decided to leave it off the list entirely. I weep for lost games.
34 – Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Year Released: 2004 | Platform: Nintendo Gamecube
Another Gamecube game, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is still the best game in the Paper Mario franchise, and the reason why I keep trying all the games that have come after it, just for the off-chance that Nintendo can make lightning strike twice.
It’s a joyful, funny adventure that has such great characters. From Peach and the pervy computer, to a wacky Bowser, and endless witty sidekicks. The turn based gameplay with it’s wide range of moves and badges to mix up your abilities, I loved this experience, and it came completly out of left field when I first played it way back in my teenage years.
33 – Bravely Default
Year Released: 2013 | Platform: Nintendo 3DS
While I’m not a fan of a lot of the 3D games that graced the Nintendo 3DS, because I find the 3D models to be ugly as sin. my biggest annoyance with Bravely Default’s style is the toothpicks they use for legs. Seriously, look at some screenshots. None of the chracters have feet! But I’ve never been a graphics first gamer, and the gameplay of Bravely Default (and it’s sequel, Bravely Second: End Layer), hooked me from the very first battle.
While turn based like the NES trilogy of Final Fantasygames, what sets Bravely Default apart is it’s namesake. Characters can “Brave” on their turn to take multiple actions in one go. Or, Default, to defend themselves, and store up a turn for a later use. This ebb and flow of actions makes playing a turn based JRPG a breeze. For the random encounters, just brave all your characters and (hopefully) you’ll wipe them out in a single round. For boss encounters, have everyone default and wait for your moments to strike.
That system, coupled with a Job system reminiscent to Final Fantasy III, made Bravely Default one of my favourite Square Enix games on the Nintendo 3DS.
32 – Donkey Kong 64
Year Released: 1999 | Platform: Nintendo 64
Now here’s an entry based solely on nostalgia, as I haven’t played this since like, 2001. Donkey Kong 64 is a 3D collect-a-thon platformer on the Nintendo 64. Donkey Kong, along with his friends, like Diddy, Tiny, and Lanky, traverse worlds, collecting multicoloured bananas as they try to stop King K. Rool from destroying Kong Island.
I say this lives on Nostalgia, because I’m pretty sure if I went back and replayed Donkey Kong 64 now, I would get endlessly frustrated with it. Each Kong can collect a specific colour of banana, and wield a unique gun, and have unique abilities. Each of these unique traits are used to unlock more parts of each level, so each other Kong can get further and collect more of their colour bananas. Now, as I said, it’s been a long time since I played this, but I’m pretty sure the amount of back tracking involved with ensure I never finish this game again, let along complete it.
I had a lot of fun with Donkey Kong 64 when I was a kid. But as an adult who doesn’t have much time for video games, I’m much more likely to start up a replay of Banjo-Kazooie instead.
31 – Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
Year Released: 1995 | Platform: Super Nintendo
Yoshi’s Island is quite the game play depature from a game sporting the title “Super Mario World: 2”. Instead of Mario running and jumping on Koopas, getting powerups and having a sense of velocity, Yoshi’s Island saddles a multicolour series of Yoshi with a baby Mario, and sends you on a slower adventure. The art is amazing here, with everything having a wonderful pencil crayon aesthetic to it.
The monsters are all cute, and the music is just wonderful. Yoshi’s can jump on baddies, but their main tool is throwing eggs, which, in addition to dispaching enemies, can also be used to solve puzzle, knock down crates, and help you progress past seemingly impossible high cliffs.
If your goal is just to reach the end of every level, then Yoshi’s Island is a simple, fun game. If you strive for 100% on every level, which means finding 5 flowers, 20 red coins, and keeping Mario’s star-power health at 30, then this game turns into a challenge, even for adult me. I highly recommend giving this game a go.
The way my game group operates, is that we rotate hosting between each member. Whoever’s turn it is to host, gets to pick the game(s) we play that evening. Sometimes we finish our game a bit early, so the host gets to break out one of their smaller games to cap off the evening. Such was the case the other day when Blokus 3D hit the table.
We had just been handed a crushing defeat in the final mission of Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth: Shadowed Paths expansion, which meant our campaign had finally come to a close. As some kind of detox from the heavily thematic combat oriented game, the colourful blocks called to Bigfoot, who plopped it onto the table.
Blokus 3D (otherwise known as Rumis) is a three-dimensional abstract strategy game. All players receive the same pieces, then take turns placing piece after piece, trying to be the player who comes out on top. Literally. The victor is the player who has the most blocks of their colour when viewing the final structure from above.
The game starts with a template being placed down on the plastic lazy susan creating a form for the structure that you’re going to build. The structure also goes up in steps, where the first row can only be one block high, while the second row can be up to 2 blocks high, and so on until you reach 6 blocks. The only other placement restriction is that the block you place must touch another block of your own colour (which is the opposite of regular Blokus rules, where your blocks cannot touch other blocks of your colour). Beyond that, players just alternate taking turns until someone runs out of blocks or no players are able to play anymore.
The lazy susan is a nice touch, as there will be times when the structure has created a cliff, or your only spot to place is now from a single square poking out the back of the structure. The play area on that lazy susan has ridges, so the blocks don’t go flying off the base when you rotate it, but that same consideration does not extend to the blocks themselves. An errant sneeze could send your whole game scattered across the table. Not that I would know….
A big part of Blokus 3D is placing your blocks in such a way that it benefits you, but also doesn’t let your opponents completely hem you in. in a higher player count game, a poor placement and cutthroat opponents can see a player eliminated after a single block placement. I appreciate the depth in this thought, the short term gain of getting a lot of blocks on the top-most layer, but not working towards the later game of having more placement options.
It’s quite nice having a three-dimensional positional abstract game. There’s no randomness, no luck involved in Blokus 3D, just skill and strategy. It’s a spatial puzzle that tickles the brain in a delightful way, and a game that made me instantly want to play it again and again. It helps that games are so short, with only, like, 12 pieces allocated per player. At 2 players, it’s a knife fight in a phone booth as you try desperately to avoid giving your opponent a leg up, and at higher player counts it’s more tactical. Rewarding you for having multiple options each turn, and snapping the perfect spots when the time is ripe.
I enjoyed Blokus 3D more than it’s 2D cousin, but I have always enjoyed spatial puzzles, and the inclusion of the 3rd dimension feels new and exciting to me. I wish the blocks weren’t quite so slick, so I could play this with my kids and not worry about their non-dextrous fingers knocking the whole game over, but as it stands, it’s a great cerebral puzzle to bust out at the end of the night when you really feel like crushing your opponents and punishing them for their lack of forethought.
I just looked at my usual online game stores, and it looks like Blokus 3D is hard to find. But hey, maybe this can be the grail game that gets you into thrift stores and yard sales.
If you ask “What is the best Final Fantasy game?”, or read any Final Fantasy games tier-list or top list, you’ll find Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII most often cited as the best Final Fantasy games every. Alongside those two, manywill cite Final Fantasy Tactics as their favourite game of all time, let alone of the Final Fantasy franchise. The cult following that adores Final Fantasy Tactics is strong and pervasive.
I originally played Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions on the PSP back in 2009. At that time, I was already a pretty big fan of Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance, the Gameboy Advance follow-up, so I figured I was in for a good time. Unbeknownst to me, is there are a couple point in the game where you are required to do a couple of battles back to back, with no opportunity to respec your team between those battles. One of those fights has the main character fighting all on his own. I stupidly only had one save file throughout the game, and soft locked my progress, as I had set Ramza into a weaker job temporarily so I could unlock a better job in a few fights. At that point I put the game down, and never came back.
Until now! Final Fantasy Tactics recently got a new remaster in the form of the Ivalice Chronicles, with an updated UI, voice acting, auto save, multiple difficulty levels, fast-forward, better camera control, enhanced, smoothed out graphics, and the ability to return to the world map at any point (thank goodness). Unfortunately, I’m too cheap to buy new games, so I decided to load up my PSP emulator and start a play through of the 2007 remaster, The War of the Lions
Gameplay
If you’ve played an SRPG or “tactics” game before, things should be familiar to you. Final Fantasy Tactics puts you in control of a small squad of 4 – 5 units. These units face off against other squads of similiar size on a grid based battlefield, and through any tactical advantage you can muster (or via sheer overwhelming force), you hope to be the one left standing at the end of the day.
Each unit has a job, giving them special abilities to use during combat. Starting as a Squire or Chemist, most characters will just walk around the map and bop enemies on their heads. As you do that, that character will earn EXP to level up and get stronger, and JP, or Job Points, which they can use to learn new skills. As you level up a job, you’ll unlock new jobs. Some make sense, like getting to a level 2 Squire unlocks the Knight job. Knights can equip swords, shields, and heavy armor for beefy HP bonuses, and their abilities all focus around breaking your opponent’s equipment or skills. Chemists, on the other hand, level up to White and Black mages, which in turn unlock Summoners, Time Mages, Mystics, and the powerful Arithmetician.
When a character changes job, they gain the inherent abilities of the job they’re currently using, like the Knight being able to equip heavy armor, or the Archer being able to use bows. As you spend JP to learn skills, you can apply them to your character, even after their job has changed. Further to that, every character has two action ability slots. One is automatically used by the job you have, like Black Magic for a Black Mage. But that second action slot can be filled by any job that character has previously dabbled in. In my case, my Black Mage also has extensive experience as a white mage, giving them great offensive and defensive versatility.
Menus over menus
This system is wonderfully open, allowing you to mix and match jobs and skills to create units that feel truely unique and distinct from one another. You’ll mourn when a character goes down, suddenly feeling the loss of the abilities they were offering your team. You’ll struggle to decide if you should keep an extra character with items so they can use a phoenix down when your main healer falls, or, if you are willing to let go of the skill that increases your chance to hit in favour of being able to hold two swords at once. These trade-offs will have buried in the menus inbetween every battle, constantly tweaking your units to shore up and weaknesses that were discovered in the last battle.
The core gameplay loop of engaging in battles, earning JP, spending JP on skills, tweaking jobs and abilities, and then using those new skills in another battle, is utterly addicting. Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions has stolen a few hours of sleep from me as I push my bedtime into the wee hours of the morning, saying “Just one more battle. I’ve almost unlocked the Ninja, then I’ll go to sleep…”
The downsides of the battles, however, is that they can be long and unfair. More than once I’ve had my whole party wiped out by a random battle, only to reload a save, try again, and steam roll the competition. A well-timed block, the opponents choosing to pile onto your healer, or any number of other factors can cause a snowball effect that makes a map nearly impossible. One time my white mage missed reviving Ramza 4 times in a row (it had a 64% chance to hit), then he disappeared from the battlefield, triggering a game over.
Pictured above: Tactical Advantage
Reloading and bashing your head against a brick wall seems to be a core feature of Final Fantasy Tactics. There are a couple of battles near the end of chapter 3 that, even after grinding, took several attempts and a string of good luck to complete. There was one mission where you had to protect an AI controlled character, and literally before any of my characters had a chance to move, she was KO’d by the 3 opposing assassins. I ended up re-speccing my team to be thieves with high speed so they’d be able to move sooner, then just threw them into the line of fire and hoped the opposing AI opponents would take the bait.
In these situations, you’re almost railroaded into having a specific team composition or loadout. This feels like the anthesis of the open-ended team building that the entire game is built around. If you wanted Ramza to be a support character or a spell caster, there’s a boss battle that forces him into a one on one duel. Even if you’re prepared for the fight, the opponent will KO you in 2 hits, forcing you to change your character into one that is specifically built to counter that fight.
Some of these fights will teach you an imporant lesson in having multiple save slots, as there are several battles in the second half off the game that take place right after the other, and if you find yourself unable to progress, without having a backup save, you’ll be softlocked within that battle screen, as a failure will kick you back out to the title screen to either continue from a save, or, start a whole new game.
Story
The story of Final Fantasy Tactics is one of intrigue, plots, villainy, and backstabbing. Ramza is the youngest of a prestigious house, and after a series of unfortunate decisions by those in power, he is thrust into a world embroiled in war. The Black and White lions fight for power and control over the crown, while the church manipulates both sides from the shadows, hoping to capitalize on the chaos. There are dozens of characters, allegiances are ever shifting, and there’s an undercurrent of class struggle that’s particularly present in the first quarter of the game. Ramza, after seeing the callousness of the ruling class, takes a step back and instead fights for justice and peace.
I’m going to start folding in Delita’s insults into my everyday vocabulary
The last act of the game devolves into a supernatural mystery of characters fighting over the Zodiac stones, which transform the holder into monsters of terrible power, which Ramza is quick to put down, and gets labelled as a heritc in the process. The story culminates with the kidnapping of Ramza’s sister to be the host for the resurrection of Ultima, which, again, Ramza is tasked with preventing the coming of the other worldly horror.
What’s interesting about the story of Final Fantasy Tactics, is that Ramza doesn’t come out a hero in the end. He does manage to save is sister and prevent the demons from ruling the world, but very few even know of their existence, and even less know of Ramza’s involvement with stopping the plot. Instead, after the credits, he and Alma take to the road to live out the rest of their lives in quiet peace.
Presentation
I played the PSP War of the Lions remake, which includes a number of upgrades from the original. The animated cutscenes are beautiful and have good voice acting. The localization mostly makes sense, with some really great dialogue that sets the tone for the game. The curses and insults mixed in with the complex political intrigue remind me of reading some really good fantasy novels, instead of the simple childlike dialogue that most JRPGs treat their players to.
Samantha is my mage, Turstin is my knight, but is my archer Alison or Ayleth?
The user interface, on the other hand, could use some work. In Final Fantasy Tactics, the order in which the units will take their next turn is vitally important. But to see the order of your turn, you need to back out of your action menu, press triangle, and select order list, where you’re given a list of names. Hopefully you’ve memorized the names of your units, but the opposing team is basically a guessing game. You can click on each of the names in red and see which one is going to move next, but it’s a pain to do. The character portraits do have a little indicator when you move the cursor over them, giving a rough indication of what order that character is going to go it, but it’s a right pain when you’re trying to figure out which spell to cast and if the charging time will run out before your target takes their next move.
While I generally really enjoy the isometric view of most Tactics games, the camera in Final Fantasy Tactics was constantly giving me trouble. Some maps play with elevation and will have your units fighting in a narrow alleyway. But this makes it impossible to see all the units. More than once I found myself spinning the map around and around, only catching glimpses of units hiding in the corners, and I had to hunt with the cursor to find them. Even worse would be when an enemy mage would start to cast a spell behind a wall that I couldn’t see who or where they were casting. I do like the 3D environments, they do create some interesting battlefields, but the implementation of them leaves much to be desired.
There’s a lot of action going on behind those walls
I spoke before about being buried in menus, and I wasn’t kidding. Every time you want to check on the equipment or abilities of your units, you’ll be going 4 menus deep. While I really loved the job system and customizing my characters, the menu system was clunky and unintuitive. Swapping between characters wasn’t always possible, sometimes you need to back out to the second layer of menus so you could drill down deeper on the next character. Even in the middle of combat, you’ll be selecting which of your action skills to use, then which action, then which target, and if you want to target the unit or the tile, filling the whole screen with cascading menus. This was less onerous, but it is ugly.
I will say that I’ve been looking at screenshots of The Ivalice Chronicles remake with some significant envy. The newest remaster looks pretty great, has full voice acting, the graphics and UI is cleaned up, and actually looks like they address all of my issues from War of the Lions
Final Thoughts
As with most of the Final Fantasy games I’ve been playing for the first time, I asked myself, “Is this worth playing in 2025?” For Final Fantasy Tactics, the answer is a resounding yes. The job system remains endlessly satisfying, so much so that I’d happily start a new run right now if Final Fantasy VIII weren’t already looming on my backlog. The War of the Lions remaster still holds up beautifully, thanks to its excellent writing and deep, rewarding mechanics. And if you have access to The Ivalice Chronicles remake, it looks to be the definitive way to experience this classic.
That said, Final Fantasy Tactics isn’t flawless. The clunky menus, uneven difficulty, and occasional cheap battles can test your patience. But even with its rough edges, it’s an easy game to recommend. I’m glad I finally returned to it after all these years, older, more patient, and better able to appreciate its ambition. If I’d played this as a teenager, I probably would have been obsessed. As it stands now, I can at least recognize Final Fantasy Tactics for what it is: a landmark in tactical RPG design that commands respect, even decades later.
