BG3 has some very fun gameplay at times, such as the much-lauded variety with which you can deal with the Goblin Camp in Act 1. That's where it shines.

The writing is not really comparable. BG3 is in the "fine for a video game" territory. Disco Elysium's writing is art, both the narratives, the characters, the themes and even the prose itself.

Was it the game, or was it the life you had while playing the game?

I don't see them in the comments so: UFO 50 and OneShot.

It's the vibe. TotK just... Feels more industrial, and less clean and hopeful. BotW was just so pretty and you HAD to walk to places or glide the first time. The machines in TotK made it so easy to skip the nature that it felt less rewarding to play. Like, if you could just snap your fingers and have the perfect house immediately with no work, no effort, the house wouldn't feel as rewarding as one you built with your own skill.

Have you played Prey? Only other game to scratch that same itch for me.

I see Outer Wilds here but not Nioh 2, so I'm posting about Nioh 2.

Soulsian adventure with ninja gaiden blood, extremely high amount of endgame content, wild depth of character building, lots of avenues to increase your character's power with many "correct answers" to the question of "how should I make my dude stronger". Dropped a while before the most recent push for graphical fidelity with AI upscaling/antialiasing so it actually runs well on a large majority of steam hardware surveys machines.

It's hard early on, but provides the player with tons of options when it comes to progressing through stages and bosses, flexible movesets for each class of weapon and access to potent tools like Gun and turning into an enemy that killed you a dozen times the first time you saw it briefly. The endgame goes beyond replaying through the game into dungeons made of fragments of the stages and some more unique maps (The Abyss). There's a hefty amount of individual bosses to learn, and incentive to do some of the more fun fights in the game multiple times - a lot of which do not require a run back through a stage to get to them. The game does itself a service by breaking up gameplay into chunks with a world map you launch missions from, some of which are just a singular straight up boss fight.

Prey, System Shock 2, Outer Wilds, and Undertale are fully-realized microcosms where the primary game is unfolding the complex origami of the setting. All of them absolutely beautiful to experience.

Factorio.

I tried to play that game, expecting perhaps a DMC-like gameplay.

Instead I got a 2D plane scroller?

Then 2D sort of platformer?

Then some weird 3D action that I did not understand at all?

What the fuck is that game.

If I enjoyed combat more, I could give it another go. But it was just not for me.

• Chrono Trigger
• Disco Elysium
• Sekiro
• Zelda Ocarina of Time
• Bioshock
• Portal
• Half Life
• Nier Automata
• Tetris

Flawed Masterpieces

• Minecraft (surprising)
• Dragon age Origins
• Team Fortress 2
• Fallout New Vegas
• Dark Souls
• Every Baldur's Gate

Masterpiece in my heart: Terraria

Super Metroid

Is disco Elysium the one with all the talking? Like multiple books worth of text? No thanks

Btw how is RDR2 not on the list?

Games I haven't seen mentioned yet:

• Fez - cute little 2D/3D platformer. It's amazing and very wholesome

• Stalker: Shadow of Chenrobyl - dunno what exactly is it, perhaps the settings and the grit, but it has a special place in my heart. It's about average FPS, but not too long and for me enjoyable

• F.E.A.R. - very good FPS, with amazingly scripted enemies, decent horror elements (not compulsory - you might miss some of them if you're not looking).

• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - for me the best 3rd person action adventure ever. Best combat hands down (or head, or torso, you choose), streamlined blade dance at your fingertips. You play with your enemies, and you get many tools. There are some locked camera issues.

• Touhou: Lost branch of time - If you liked Slay the Spire, but wished for colorful mana, this is the game for you. It has anime artstyle, I usually focus on the cards, though it might turn some people off

• Dota 2 - Dunno if it was mentioned and I didn't see, but the mechanics are absolutely amazing, the things the game lets you get away with are incredible. 10/10, but other people might bring your experience down. Specially friends. Can play against custom (workshop) bots. Still takes too long to git gud. I studied the game for 10 years and still sucked.

• Divinity 2: Original Sin - also haven't seen a mention, everybody talks about BG3, I haven't yet played it, but D2:OS was also a masterpiece. Haven't played a lot of TRPGs, this was a blast, with easily set up multiplayer. Played through it twice completely, with many abandoned runs.

• CS 1.6 - remember that? I lost my childhood to that. They don't make counter strikes this good anymore.

• Synthetik - top-down rougelike shooter, with amazing weapons and physics and classes and enemies and mechanics and 2 person multiplayer

• Dwarf Fortress - the real objectively best game strategy simulation of the 3D box world, predecesor to both Minecraft and Terraria, but with A LOT more sand in your box. They are still extending it. And it's on Steam if you want a UI.

• Terraria (Calamity mod) - Terraria is obviously a great game, but what makes it 20/10 is the mods. Calamity specifically. Tripple the content, 5x the difficulty (20x if you try Infernum), amazing multiplayer experience. Don't install Infernum if you haven't beaten at least Revengeance on Calamity. Trust me, it will fuck you up.

• Yakuza 0 - how could I forget about this masterpiece? Story done absolutely right, that game had no business making me feel so strongly about it. Cool combat, very funny moments, but I cried during it. If you haven't tried it, check it out. You won't regret it.

• OpenTTD - Trains. Do you like to create and manage big rail systems? This is for you. And your friends. Only noobs use planes. Only psychos use boats. Nobody uses only vehicles.

I tried playing it, but the combat... the combat, man, I can play many games, finished Elden Ring, played ton of CS1.6, Dota 2, Terraria Infernum... but Sekiro I could not finish.

I've heard it's a rhytmic game, but I suck at those, too.

::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
:::

Hades

Hollow Knight

Noita

Super Metroid

Prey (2017)

DOOM (2016)

Factorio

Stardew Valley

Good list. I desperately wanted to put Dark Souls on my list, as the first blind playthrough of it was a magical experience. But I don't think it's correct, no matter how much I love it. Flawed masterpiece is about right.

I love STALKER with all my heart, and if we're talking atmosphere and vibes and even world building it is up there. But it does not really belong in the objective masterpiece category. Flawed masterpiece, maybe.

Also I think Call of Pripyat is the better STALKER game, but it might be controversial.

Disco Elysium is definitely closer to the visual novel spectrum of video games than it is to something like Tetris. But make no mistakes, its narrative and impact would be much lessened were it delivered in any other medium. It is absolutely a perfect example of how you use video games to make art.

Hard to argue with most of those. I'd put Ocarina of Time over BotW, but that's splitting hairs. Diablo 2 needs LoD included in my opinion.

God of War is an embarrassing blind spot in my gaming history. Is it actually that good?