Favourite Games

[Sly Boots]

I'm gonna level with you guys, I'm a Rome 1 man, and I'm prepared to fight about it ¬_¬

[Medicine Man]

Shogun for me.

[Gibby]

Rome 1 was another cracking one, but it was the first one that NEEDED mods to get the best out of it, as have they all since. Well, for us true history nerds, anyway.

[Maturin]

It's okay, I still enjoyed Rome 1. It's really nicely presented. I just felt the 3D campaign map was ultimately flawed, plus the battles were mostly over in 5 minutes with everything just piling into eachother in one mass brawl.

I was constantly longing for the more tactical battles of M1.

[Gibby]

It's okay, I still enjoyed Rome 1. It's really nicely presented. I just felt the 3D campaign map was ultimately flawed, plus the battles were mostly over in 5 minutes with everything just piling into eachother in one mass brawl.

I was constantly longing for the more tactical battles of M1.

Yeah. One among many reasons why mods were (and are still) needed with every TW game after Medieval 1.

Heck, I remember fighting an intense battle that lasted 40 minutes on Medieval 1. I was never at any point bored, and they weren't full stack armies. Things were tactical, epic and all that in equal measure. To be fair, I also miss the 2D sprites...

EDIT: Also, every single unit, if you right clicked it in the campaign map, had a named captain with a portrait. You started to feel attachment to regiments because of that alone - and would fear for them if the battle went badly - hoping they made it off the field with some survivors.

[Maturin]

Yep, I had a battle lasting over an hour with hordes of reinforcements. I remember holding out with about 10% of my army left on a hill by the very end, with thousands of bodies littering the map.

No TW ever achieved that again.

[Gibby]

I'll put forward that Rome 1 with the Europa Barbarorum mod came close.

That mod is so good that there's still a large online community who still play battles together.

[Maturin]

I think I recall installing it and trying to get it working at one point years ago, but for some reason didn't get very far with it. I've heard it completely changes the battles.

[Gibby]

I might make a Total War thread so I don't derail this one any further!

[Sly Boots]

I will admit that the fact the Roman period is the part of history I'm most interested in certainly played a part in which TW game was my favourite.

I never played the second one though after all the dodgy reviews.

[Gibby]

The second one is a worthy enough game now. It's been overhauled in various positive ways since release, and has some splendid mods that make it even better.

[Maturin]

Yes that was a complete balls up on release unfortunately. Especially so, as it came straight after the brilliant Shogun 2.

Don't quite know how they managed that.

[Alan]

Warhammer was the best one

[Gibby]

Warhammer was the best one

[Mantis]

Final Fantasy 7

All time favourite RPG. Defined a huge part of my pre-teen and teenage years as I grew up. Is pretty much responsible for my taste in games, game music and even friends to a certain extent, as some of my closest lifelong friends were formed at school where we bonded over our love of this game.

Helps that it has one of the best stories, group of characters, music and gameplay mechanics out of the whole franchise.

Final Fantasy 9

As above, except 9 is slightly more slick. Gameplay is slightly more nostalgic for the original 90s FF games, but the music, characters and writing is just supremely on point.

These two, plus FF6 are the quintessential JRPGs alongside other franchises like Persona 4, Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana. Final Fantasy caught my heart first though.

Dark Souls

Discovering this game when my housemate at university imported a Japanese copy before it came out in the UK is a memory I hold very dearly. We would all sit and watch him struggle through all the different zones in awe, we'd never seen anything like this game before; so bleak, haunting and challenging but also rather beautiful and intricately designed. It really is the perfect action RPG. It doesn't give you anything, even most of the lore is hidden away in the level design and item descriptions for you to discover yourself.

There are so many noteworthy titles that I've put hundreds of hours into each over the years; Guild Wars, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, so many JRPGs, Diablo 2, countless PS1 and PS2 games that I happily wasted my childhood on. Those are my top three though and it would take something very special to change that standing right now.

Man, I fucking love video games.