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Rimworld Having been burned by grand Early Access promises in the past, I paid no attention to this until it was officially released. It immediately zoomed up into my all-time best list with the likes of Civilization. Like Civilization, Rimworld covers an absurdly broad scope by making smart decisions about where to simplify and abstract to concentrate on the fun (something conspicuously lacking in Dwarf Fortress.) So while no one would ever say the combat in Rimworld is the pinnacle of tactics, it is entertaining and serves the game as a whole. The outstanding area of Rimworld, though, is its social system, where a handful of simple numbers generate enough drama to fill multiple soap operas. The building, crafting, trading, combat, etc. in Rimworld are all good, but what you take away from the game is the stories: the story of an alcoholic’s long struggle to kick his habit, or the story of how a gardener came down with dementia after gathering one too many harvests in the toxic fallout and the quest to find the Glitterworld tech that would heal her, or the story of how a trading expedition during the winter went so very, very wrong …
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Dishonored This game didn’t get all the attention it deserved because it gave you the option of either using its stealth options or of rushing through, guns blazing. A lot of people chose rushing through (including a lot of reviewers) and it’s a pity, because they rushed past some amazing level design. The levels of Dishonored are intricate and beautiful, and packed with an insane amount of detail; the party level is one of the best-designed levels in any game ever. (Dishonored 2 is likewise excellent, and its Clockwork Mansion level also deserves to be on that all-time best list.) The atmosphere of corruption is outstanding; this was the first game to make me fear videogame rats. The only problem with the game is that the main characters are a little flat: Corvo and Emily could have been as memorable as Geralt and Ciri, but the execution just isn’t at that level. Speaking of which …
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The Witcher 3 The combat is mediocre and the leveling system is unmemorable; those are two pretty big strikes because they’re defining characteristics of a CRPG. But everything else is soooo good: the writing and the character arcs, the worldbuilding and world layout, the voice acting, the music, even the eye movements of the characters. Consistent execution is very rare in both large-scale CRPGs and open world games, and the Witcher 3 takes the crown in both categories.
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Minecraft It’s a mess. It looks like programmer art, there’s no mid-game at all, the “survival” part fizzles out after a couple of days, and the thing as a whole feels curiously unfinished nine years after hitting 1.0. Of course, nobody cares that it’s a mess. It’s the best-selling game of all time: the game that launched countless mods, survival games, crafting games, memes, and Youtube careers. And the reason nobody cares that it’s a mess is that the moment-to-moment gameplay is so engaging. Just chopping down a tree feels satisfying, and crafting your own little mud hut before the first sunset feels like an achievement even after doing it a hundred times. (The Stanley Parable: “Isn’t it grand? Isn’t it perfect? It could only be better if - wait, that’s it! We must rebuild it out of diamond! Diamond everything! Yes, yes, yes… come along, Stanley, we have to go mining!”)
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Subnautica This game took the raw elements of Minecraft - survival, crafting, and the raw terror of being in an alien environment - and turned it into what is in some ways Minecraft’s polar opposite, namely a polished, tuned game with a beginning, middle, and end. As a science fiction fan it gets major points from me for creating a believable alien world filled with alien animals that felt like, well, alien animals, and not just some horror movie boogiemen sprinkled in with cute fluff critters to sell merch. It also gets points for being an amazing VR experience, even with the janky pop-in. I loved the feeling of exploring a majestic kelp forest in VR, and then having a huge sea beast glide overhead …
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Divinity Original Sin 2 And this is the polar opposite of Witcher 3 in many ways. The storytelling and world building are serviceable (and much better than the previous game), but not the reason anyone remembers this. Instead, its strength is the tactical combat, the weird and wacky mechanics, and the many, many memorable stories that the players make for themselves as their combat strategies either go well or hilariously poorly. As a fan of the Gold Box games back in the day, I had been waiting for a turn-based tactical fantasy CRPG like this for decades.
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Skyrim Bethesda very seldom fires on all cylinders, but most the cylinders were firing most of the time here, resulting in a fantasy RPG that feels suitably epic and an open-world game that feels like there’s something interesting around every corner. The real reason it’s on this list, though, is the landscape design. Not from a purely visual angle, where its lumpy graphics have since been eclipsed by RDR2, BOTW, Witcher 3, or any random Ubisoft title. I’m talking about the quest flow: no other game does a better job of using quests that criss-cross the landscape to lead you into new places or situations while pretending every choice is up to you. I’ll never forget going into a swamp on some random quest only to come across the city of Solace looming magnificently above me in the distance. It made a big impression because it felt like I had “discovered” it on my own; but of course the designers knew what they were doing when they sent me into that swamp.
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Islanders I never for a minute thought this would make my list … until I looked at my hours played. For those that don’t know, Islanders is a puzzle game disguised as a city-builder: you put down tiles in a constrained space, positioning them so as to score points; basically turn-based Tetris with buildings. That’s it. It’s quite simple, but much like Tetris it’s brilliant because it’s so simple, and so very well-tuned. Extremely addictive, and because it’s turn-based it’s the perfect game for playing for 5 minutes at a time.
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Age of Wonders III As somebody said upthread, not quite the dream fantasy 4x I have in my head, but it’s still pretty damn good. It has the traditional AOW issue of tactical combat being fun but making game length unwieldly; that did not stop me from playing for hundreds of hours.
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Red Dead Redemption When we look back, this will probably go down as Rockstar’s best game. True, RDR2 is much more polished, but RDR1 has virtues of its own. For one thing, it’s not as bloated with unecessary and unfun subsystems and side activities. For another, it had the advantage of having been released before the trademark Rockstar mission design - shooting gallery section, something goes wrong “unexpectedly” in a cutscene, move 30 yards, another shooting gallery section, rinse and repeat - had worn so very, very thin. But mostly RDR’s excellent story stands on its own, while RDR2’s story, while still good, is constantly standing in the shadow of its predecessor. I would have preferred they come up with an all-new story for RDR2 instead of trying to tack something on to a masterpiece: you could make a prequel to The Wild Bunch, but should you?
Honorable Mentions
Stardew Valley
Horizon Zero Dawn
Gone Home
Outer Wilds
Breath of the Wild
Streets of Rogue - This game takes the “goofy, chaotic fun” crown away from Just Cause 2 and Saints Row 4 for me. It’s absurd and silly and over-the-top, while at the same time supporting an impressively large number of playstyles. It’s the Deus Ex of games that allow you to play as a gorilla. Also notable for being the rare rogue-like that supports 4-player multiplayer co-op.
Best Games That I Don’t Actually Like That Much (i.e. games that don’t match my specific tastes, but I totally understand why they’re on other people’s lists.)
Slay the Spire
Dark Souls
Terraria
Darkest Dungeon
XCOM and XCOM 2 - Fine games that helped revive turn-based tactical games. But for better or worse they cannot compete with my memories of playing the original. Mind you, by this point my misty watercolor memories of the original are probably 50% confabulation, and any sane person new to the genre would be much better off playing the recent ones than subjecting themselves to the torture of the original game’s UI.