It's alive!

I never played the original, but I picked this one up to see what the fuss was all about, and I loved every minute of it.

The main appeal is the Pokémon themselves, and if you have no affinity towards the series it probably won't do much for you with its gameplay alone. But sometimes you just want a chill, low-stakes, fun distraction and this is exactly what this game provides.

It also has way more content than I originally expected (plus the free DLC that came later), so I feel like I got my money's worth.

It reignited my love for Pokémon and I ended up getting Sword a few months later, so good job Nintendo, you got me there!

I waited until the last minute to squeeze in a couple more games, haven't finished them yet but based on what I played so far I don't think they'd crack my list anyway.

I have 3 HMs sorted out, but I'm really struggling with ordering my top 5, I loved them all for very different reasons, they're all number 1 in my heart!

I'll make sure to send the list by the end of the day.

I think maybe the games that show up in the Favourite Genres section are simply the two most recently played, not most played.

That would track in my case, I think Trine and Shantae are the latest I touched on Wii U, same for Pokemon X and Sun on 3DS for example.

No idea why Trine 2 and Shantae show up everywhere in the Wii U recap, but that's a solid top 3. I feel like it doesn't count the Wii games I played on it, otherwise Metroid Prime Trilogy probably would have made it.

On 3DS, Fire Emblem Fates is cheating a bit since it's pretty much 3 games in one.

I'm definitely planning to pick up F.I.S.T. the next time I get the metroidvania itch.

@sentinel-beach Sweet! I'm not at all into racing games but Iwant to get sucked into Gran Turismo, I'm ready to be hyped!

@oscillator I'm not gonna spoil myself just for the sake of the forums vote. In my case, I've just been extremely busy with work last year, still am, so there's games I bought like Deathloop but haven't had the time to touch yet.

I do agree that the games I chose to play over others are the ones I was most passionate about, but sometimes a game you didn't expect to love ends up being amazing.

I don't understand the urge to have the vote now, but I'll follow the majority.

I could use a couple more months to go through a few extra 2021 games, but if the majority wants to do it now I won't die on that hill :)

@mbun Yeah I get that the appeal is supposed to be the open-world exploration, and I would be excited about that... if it didn't look just as basic as the Wild Area in Sword and Shield. It may be larger, but that's it.

Maybe they're really bad at making trailers, but nothing they've shown tells me that there's anything to see in this barren world except for sparse roaming Pokémon. Traversal itself doesn't seem particularly interesting, sure you'll have ride Pokémon but are there any areas that are challenging to reach in any way?

Morrowind had a more interesting open-world 20 years ago. In a post-BotW world, it's not enough to just say "We're open-world!"

So anyway, I hope it turns out more interesting than it looks so far, I'd buy it day one if they gave me one good reason, but I don't see it yet.