The 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft

Final Fantasy X (Originally on PS2/Remastered Edition on pretty much anything including Switch)

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So this one is a pure nostalgia play from me. As the first PS2 Final Fantasy, this game is honestly a bit of a mess, eschewing the to-this-point standard world map hub design of the previous entries into the series for what essentially amounts to a series of bland corridors with NPCs wandering about. The story is absolutely nonsensical even by Final Fantasy standards, let’s get that out of the way, and I still haven’t the faintest clue what the hell actually happened in this game despite having played it to completion multiple times.

Why am I choosing it then? Well, against my better judgment, it’s still simply a fun time. The battle system is the last hurrah of the traditional Final Fantasy turn-based party system and the Sphere Grid leveling system is probably the best level system/skill tree system any modern RPG has come up with. The character work is solid despite my massive misgivings about the plot, the ending of the game made young kid me cry. This is also the last mainline Final Fantasy game to be primarily composed by Nobuo Uematsu, which is sorta like being the last Star Wars composed by John Williams, and the main theme of the game remains stuck in my head some twenty years after I first played the game.


I’ve been laid out over the last couple days with a bad head cold mixed with what I’m pretty sure is a mild bout of heat stroke (them Tokyo summers are no joke) and being relatively bedridden, I’ve been stuck mostly playing the Switch 2. This, despite all its faults, is the game I’ve decided to play through again as a change of pace form Breath of the Wild. And it still hits like crack. (You’ll never get me to like the broken mechanics of the blitzball minigame though.)
 
The appeal of Pokemon has always been team-building from the enemy monster list. That as an itch to my knowledge that’s never been attempted to be scratched by the Final Fantasy series.

Perhaps ironically, my friend and I used to take the enemy profiles from one of the older Final Fantasy games and construct our own teams on paper to compete against each other. It never occurred to us until years later, we had essentially created our own Pokemon game.

Well no, I guess constructing a team from captured enemies (the gotta catch 'em all hook) isn't a part of Final Fantasy but the world map, inventory management, and turn-based battle systems are all close enough that the distinction is somewhat lost on me. And I do know of one Final Fantasy game in the PS1 era that does involve a larger roster of potential party members which you choose from and selectively level-up using the battle system. So like 85% a Pokemon game, right?

Again I'll respect the sprit of the draft and not say it's name out loud but I bet you could reason out what it is pretty quickly. In any case, my brother watched the anime series religiously when it was on so I'm guessing that setting was the biggest driving force for his interest.
 
Welp. It's time. I don't see this lasting another round.

NHL '96 (1995)

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• Developer: EA Canada / High Score Productions
• Publisher: EA Sports
• Producer: Michael Brook
• Lead Designer: Mark Lesser
• Programmers: Mark Lesser, Colin Lynch Smith
• Composer: Jeff van Dyck
• Platform(s): Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo (SNES), DOS (PC), etc...

Is this possibly the best hockey game of all time? Yes.
Did I rub my thumbs raw playing as the San Jose Sharks? Also yes.

When you smacked into someone, you almost felt it. It was the first realistic hockey game out there. It was fast, it was fluid, it felt like I was actually playing hockey (fun fact: I tried out for the college hockey team. That tryout lasted about 5 minutes. Turns out basketball was where I was meant to be.)
Everything about it seemed revolutionary at the time. Announcing, commentary, crowds. A little bummed that blood was gone, but I bought an earlier version for it. Gretzky on the Blues? OK. Maybe that's when I followed players vs. teams, because I had a Blues jersey. It was also, TBT, a pretty dope jersey. Not as cool as a Sharks jersey, but here we are.

Also, if anyone wants to hook me up with a Tiburones jersey, you know where to find me.
 
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