(I love Total War games, but I don't consider them RTSs the same way). I subsequently fell out with them after they pivoted towards always-online with Diablo III I did not finish "Heart of the Swarm" that I played in 2018, because their storytelling is terrible compared to the heights of StarCraft and WarCraft III and yet, it's impossible to deny that the mission design in StarCraft II is peak high-budget RTS. I've loved Blizzard ever since first playing WarCraft II back in 1998 (I think?). I bought "Wings of Liberty" on Day 1, in retail. It's a sublime game that opened an entire genre to me It is the best combat-focused game I ever played I had a ton of fun exploring every nook and cranny, and I am looking forward to more, similar games. A very sudden entry to this list, but since it's my GOTY, I guess it makes sense. It's the perfct expression of the formula, and one I wi l probably keep coming back to. The story is a convoluted mess spliced by epic boss fights Batman as a character is flat, one-dimensional and boring but the game itself is a joy to play. I love the entire Arkham series, but City is my most-played, and it is still the perfect blend of world-building, open-world-ish metroidvania, side missions, and the satisfying combat+stealth loop. It's the only game whose story hit me like that. I walked away, and never booted it up again. I never finished "Blood & Wine" because at one point in the story I was faced with a choice that I did not want to make, because I kne that either outcome would be bad for characters I cared about. It raised the bar for open-world RPGs in terms of writing and quest design it created a world that was astonishingly fun to explore it gave a moving main story, that served as a good enough canvass for the mind-blowingly good and memorable, character-driven side-stories. Still, Witcher 3 is probably the ultimate complete package of a game. Hard to be unbiased, since I read all the books, TW1 is one of my most replayed games EVER, and I'm an unabashed GOG fanboy. I can't imagine this decade without AoK HD. I joined the community, I reviewed scenarios and gave feedback to people who went on to be recruited by Forgotten Empires to work on the DE versions of AoE games I started watching pros play AoK, and watched strategy videos- I had no intention of going online, but I enjoyed watching others play the game I love on such a high level Also watching the best player in the world struggle through single player campaigns was a barrel of laughs The 3 new expansions that got released for HD continued to expand that scope And then there was the custom content- Both on the Workshop, and older, legacy stuff (nearly 2 decades' worth by now!) on Age of Kings Heaven. I'm a history nerd This game covered an incredibly interesting historic period where the world wasn't yet dominated by Western Europe. But coming back to it in 2015, (I think), this became by go-to comfort food. I was never into it back when I was an RTS junkie in early 2000s, because back then teenage me craved flashy, Blizzard-like stories and presentation. I played this for just under 1400 hours.
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