Games that changed your life

[Neb]

Pokémon would be the obvious choice. It showed me how video games can be used as a social experience. I can't think of another series that has helped me find so many friends.

My second pick is Persona 5. It was the game that solidified my passion for JRPGs. Games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Trails In The Sky would've flown under my radar if I never played this game.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was the first visual novel to truly suck me into its world. While sequels like Investigations 2 and The Great Ace Attorney outdo it, I still appreciate the first entry for the the introduction.

 

[lilaë21]

I'll pick a few ones, in the order I first played them:
- Crash Team Racing, that was the first video game I ever played back when I was four. Still one of my favourite games ever, and even while imho the remake topped it overall, in some aspects the original is still the better one of the two.
- Pokémon Gold, my first Pokémon and Nintendo game overall.
- Star Wars Battlefront II (the 2005 one), maybe the game I've played the most in my entire life, or at least a good candidate for it. I definitely spent a lot of afternoons playing it with friends when I was 9 or 10 and couch multiplayer was still the way to go. I actually gave it a spin last year and imho it still feels great to play even fifteen years later.
- Super Smash Bros. Melee, I bought it a few months after I got a GameCube (very late in its generation) and it, along with MK:DD, was my stepping point into Nintendo universes.
- Sacred (adding a link as this one is probably the most obscure of the bunch), another one of my most played games ever and another one that reminds me of afternoons with friends during middle school, it also was the game that got me into RPGs.
- Super Mario Odyssey, the game that got me back into video games, and maybe the one I actually like the most out of this list. I had spent years not playing much aside from a few strategy- or city-building games every now and then (also because I didn't have any contemporary console and no computer supporting modern games) but it was the game that sold me on the Switch and was totally worth it.

 

[Sydian]

persona 5 really changed my life. i'm kind of tired and don't want to go on my usual long post rambles but like it just really changed my life man. i pushed through my anxiety to start going to cons, i started cosplaying, i got into ita bags, and like it just overall really taught me to let go of caring about what anyone thinks and just live my life and enjoy myself. i was already kind of like that but needed a little more of a push i suppose. and it gave me my all time favorite character - and damn they made him even better in royal?? i've never enjoyed a character in any medium more than i have enjoyed goro akechi. i have so much merch of him lol and i've cosplayed many of his outfits. but yeah man P5 just really did it for me. i never expected that out of a game and i cannot even really begin to convey just how much i love the game, how much better it got with the release of royal, just like what it did for me as a person. fuck i love persona 5. like we all talk a lot about the games that shaped our childhoods and i have plenty of those too but this is the first game to make a big impact on me as an adult.