Stage Select: Top 3 games of the 2010s.
3. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
SRPGs are tje one genre where I have very clear gold standards. For a long time, that standard was Final Fantasy Tactics, because it laid down a very good template for turn-based grid combat, carried over from Matsuno's earlier Tactics Ogre, with a srtory full of likeable characters. Then in 2008 came Valkyria Chronicles, which really upgraded the genre by giving it full-on 3-D graphics and a viewpoint of the battle through the eyes of your soldiers, as well as having your party members pretty well individualized. VC was my favorite 7th gen game. It was a pretty high water mark for the genre... then Three Houses came out. It not only upped the battlefield game, but fleshed out the world outside of the battlefield. The characters, especially Edelgard, were extremely likeable and playing through multiple story paths gave the game huge replay value. And thanks to Koei Tecmo, the series got a nice new 3-D console graphics look. You can switch between the omniscient view of the classic Fire Emblem games or even play the game from a soldier's-eye perspective, just like VC.
2. Dragon Quest XI S
DQXI is another example of a game which took a long-running series and made it better. I've been invested in the world of Erdrea and the story of the Luminary for quite awhile, The game keeps the story moving along nicely, and while all the conventions in the series that have deliberately been in place since the beginning work pretty well, and the developers did attempt to modernize it with a fair deal of success. Dragon Quest XI S is a charming, epic game that works on so many levels. The entire cast is again, quite likeable each in his or her own way. And the game looks and sounds gorgeous to boot. The Switch version took an already great game and made it a truly sublime experience with the extra story and gameplay content, and the symphonic suite version of the music.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
When I first played the original Zelda in 1987, it was a marvel of a game where I could roam the countryside, fighting monsters and finding treasures. It captured my imagination completely. In my mind, I was Link roaming through full-sized forests, mountains and deserts. Breath of the Wild is that long-ago dream brought to life. I often spent hours just riding and fighting my way through the countryside and seeing new sights, not really paying attention to the main quest of releasing the Divine Beasts. I really felt lost and vulnerable in remote areas in the mountainous, forested, and desert regions of Hyrule. And the world really felt dangerous. With the Ancient Guardians that destroyed Hyrule tracking you from long distances, it was an adrenaline rush. And the Lynels... whew. The Lynels never stop being dangerous, just like the Lynels in the original game. The blight-corrupted Hyrule Castle was the best final dungeon in the series to date, with its graphics, great theme music, enemies, and layout signalling that this was an epic struggle for the fate of Hyrule. The Zelda series is far and away my favorite game series of all time, and Breath of the Wild is a perfect distillation of what makes Zelda special to me.
Yes, these games are all from the past couple of years. But these three games were fantastic by any measure, and being released in the first part of the decade probably wouldn't have changed my mind. Ni no Kuni and Witcher 3 were great games, but these three games hit all the right notes when it comes to the gaming experiences I enjoy the most. And to be honest, I thought the first part of the 2010s sucked. Trends set during the late 00s continued. Angry Birds and Candy Crush were what was getting all the attention. Good games were few and far between then, and a lot of them were on the DS or PSP rather than the consoles. 2013, a great year on the PS3, actually rekindled my interest in gaming, But it was in 2017 where I got into gaming in a way I haven't been since I was a kid. The Switch has been an absolute joy of a console for me, combining Nintendo's best with a lot of the best third-party games and a full-blown Japanese renaissance that was hinted at with Ni no Kuni in 2013. So I stand by my choices for my top 3 games of the decade.
