Culix's Top 25 Games of All Time
by Culix

I forget when and why I picked this one up, but I'm just glad I did. Compared to some other RPGs I'd played by this point that seemed to be mostly going through the motions, this one somehow felt like it had more of a personal touch. The characters just seemed like they were more than just classes, and all of them seemed to interact. I wound up actually feeling kinda bad for Tia: she's the hero's childhood friend who, against his wishes, follows him on his then unclear journey. In most cases, she'd be guaranteed to get together with Maxim. But, from the moment Iris leaves Tia out of the destiny discussion, it's not looking good for her, and Maxim eventually winds up marrying Selan instead, after which the blue-haired girl leaves and doesn't even get another mention until the ending. To be fair, picking the warrior woman just made more sense; any couple that decides to screw the wedding dinner formalities to go hunt monsters is practically made for each other. And backing up to Gades, it's an interesting progression, in your several fights with him. At first, he's a fairly standard scripted boss, who I hear uses cutscene magic even if you win. The second bout actually felt like the hardest fight in the game, though that may have been from the shortage of magic-users at the time, and the Sinistral of Destruction then goes on to become average, then laughably easy in his last two fights, really giving a nice sense of how much progress has been made, and of how intentionally broken Dual Blade's Wave Motion is. The other Sinistrals beyond him fare better, but not by too much. I remember being convinced there was some secret way to get into a fight with Arek the Absolute, but Daos is, alas, the end of the line.

The plot and character interactions were good, if descending into the self-contained episodic with regular frequency, and the music had some standouts, but the puzzles were probably Lufia II's main selling point. There was, for instance, one hidden block puzzle, treated almost like a game show and known as the 'World's Most Difficult Trick.' And, as Google tells me it could take around 116 steps to solve it, the name seems pretty reasonable. All the others were more reasonable, and fairly Zelda-esque, what with the various tools (the hookshot standing out as the most blatant rip-off), and gave a nice sense of satisfaction at completion, as a good puzzle should. And, though he has nothing to do with the puzzles, there was Dekar, the game's musclehead badass. Killing Gades for the first time was pretty much only doable through his presence, and then he just goes on to punch his way out of a death trap, and casually drops by to help out at the very end after being presumed dead for the last third of the game. And for some inexplicable reason, he shows up riding the giant catfish boss from the second dungeon. Really, my biggest disappointment with Lufia II was never finding out what in the hell he'd been up to.



I can still remember the first time I played this. There aren't many gaming experiences that were hyped as much as this one, and yet it still managed to deliver. From throwing around the Bomb King to finally getting that last star on Rainbow Cruise, Mario 64 is good to the last drop. And there's so much variety, too. Tiny-Huge Island gave a somewhat unique spin on what might have otherwise been a smallish, boring map, Tick Tock Clock, aside from taking place in a giant clock, had a unique entry mechanism that could either make the area incredibly easy or impossibly difficult, and Bowser in the Sky offered one last challenging trek before the end.

Probably what really made this one for me, though, was the exploration. I spent way too long just running around the castle's courtyard, getting the hang of things. And the flying... It's one thing to watch Mario's cape wave behind him or for that raccoon tail to somehow get him airborne, and quite another to get the feeling you're actually flying Mario through the skies. Really getting to take wing like that is one of the moments in gaming that I've rarely seen surpassed.



I can't believe I almost forgot this one. This sticks to a lot of genre conventions, no doubt, but I was always pleasantly surprised by the little ways it subverted a few. Maybe it's just me, but it seems uncommon to find an RPG with elemental McGuffins that doesn't phone it in after a certain point. Even later in the game when you visit a few of the elemental-themed dungeons in rapid succession, there are still plot points to be had in each. Sure, the Evil Empire wants said McGuffins to rule the world, but it was nice to see they'd be perfectly capable of doing that with just one of them. Further, the Gigases aren't just the run-of-the-mill Evil in a Can monstrosities that your cutlass, boomerang and... silver-blob armed characters can destroy with relatively little difficulty; not only are they massive beasts you actually need a ship to fight off, but you can't even properly throw down with them for a good chunk of the game. And the airship battles... They were cool, and definitely a nice change of pace. Not to mention that the airship itself placed a greater emphasis on exploration than in most RPGs, letting the player make 'Discoveries,' and recruit new crewmembers along the way. The characters may not have been the most three-dimensional, but they each served their roles well. Hell, being one-dimensional even helped, in some cases. Like Alfonso, the total heel who in basically scene one sticks his first officer with the blame for a recent failure before pushing him overboard, and tries abandoning his leader to die right before his last bow. That jerkass getting his comeuppance wouldn't feel nearly so good if he'd had some noble reasoning behind him, or even just an 'I never made daddy proud' rationale. Sure, you can't enjoy it so much, considering what accompanies his death, but...

I went with Legends over the original because: 1) I've never played the Dreamcast version, 2) this one apparently has more stuff than its predecessor, and 3) I've heard the original's random encounter rate was actually worse than Legends', a notion that's cost me sleep. Besides, going with 2), it was awesome to be able to grab bounties off a Wanted List against really hard optional bosses, whose power rises with your level. Few sights are funnier than the little shrimp you thought was the main fighter's buffer/healer going crazy-eyed and punting his guardian at you for ridiculous damage.



I can still remember the first time I read about this one in Nintendo Power. I was just so happy to hear that, after so many years (I was about 8 or 9; three or four years felt like a lot...), Super Mario World was finally getting a sequel. It certainly turned out a bit different than I was expecting, but it's a great one nonetheless. I'm usually enjoying myself too much getting through the game to admire the graphics, but for this one I had to stop and appreciate the style they'd cultivated for Yoshi's Island, with everything seemingly drawn in crayon, and even little touches like butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. Of course, that tranquility kinda died the first time I bumped into an enemy, and the little plumber shrieked his little lungs out with the only vocalization he'd get until Mario 64. The game had a great way to keep the variety going the whole way through. The number of Shy Guy varieties alone was insane. And the Fuzzies... Not at all recommended after a meal, but a solid way to handicap yourself.

Kamek working a little magic before each boss fight made for a lot of very fun and engaging bouts. Raphael the Raven has to be one of the coolest boss battles of the era. Kamek threw me for a loop when he showered Yoshi with his arcane chemical to make him fight a regular frog from the inside out. I was really entertained when I found the Navel Piranha was completely skippable by chucking an egg at the un-magiced bulb. And the final boss in Baby Bowser was great fun in both his forms, making an excellent end to a great game.



Ah, Super Smash Brothers Melee... The amount of my life I have collectively spent with you would be depressing if all those hours hadn't been so much fun. I'm not even sure what I really need to say here: Melee's a platformer fused to a fighter by a dense adhesive of chaos and most notable Nintendo franchises that winds up being an incredibly fun game and an homage to all things Nintendo. It is super special awesome. End transmission.