Best game series of all time.

[Andromeda]

I am with Kenji on one of all time favorite series is the Civilization series, best strategy turn based game on the PC ever. And Civ 4, oooohhh it is so beautiful and wonderful. I had to force myself only to play it once. It is about the only game I play on the PC, and Civilization II is still number one in my book, though Civ 4 is doing a great job of making it better than Civ 2, it even has Spock narrating and what can beat that, its Spock, you just cannot.

I have only played a few RTSs, but my favorite and best one I have ever played is Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth, and since they are soon to release the second, it is a series now and it goes to the roots of RTS with free form building of your base, so it is bound to be my new favorite RTS. The thing that made LOTR BOME so great was the combat, it was simple and fast you could enter combat quickly and there was little construction. It was all about strategy lining up your units and making war. Plus with the scale, shear beauty, and numbers you could get out on the screen at one time it make it the most amazing battles to watch. What is better than seeing a thousand orcs, trolls and nazgul charging towards your small 300 men with Aragorn leading the charge. It gives you want you want plenty of battle and action making it a constant enjoyment to play.

Now to RPGs because the list goes on.

First there is Final Fantasy, as we all know what list is not complete without. I mean FF got me into gaming again, I was pretty bored with it and about all I did was play Zelda Ocarina and Mario 64 over and over again and Ocarina was fun, but FF made me use my PS2 and I started buying games, mainly FF, but it was everything that I enjoyed. Especially since I started with FFIX, I do not think I would have continued the series if I have played FFVII or FFVIII first, simply because FFIX was a vision to me, it was LOTR's beauty and grandeiousness in a game. The story was addicting and the characters memoriable and fun, it was and still remains my favorite game.

Xenogears/Xenosaga, my friend and I were having an all night gaming session so we rented two games, Suikoden III and Xenosaga I. We played both games for about 3-4 hours and left them at that. 6 months later I buy Xenosaga and beat the game falling in love with the depth and story, it took cutscenes to a whole other level in length and involvement, it was simply out to save the universe, there was politics, religion, a wide array of threads that made this game enjoyable. Xenosaga II I bought immediately and have the same feelings aside from some annoyance. However, it was Xenogears that started the series and it truly the best weaving a long story far more detail, deep and intriguing than Xenosaga it is the best of the series and probably one of the best RPGs ever simply on story merit.

Dragon Quest, while I have not played the others of the series, having played DQVIII, if the others are anything close it, I can see why this is such a popular series in Japan. The attention to detail in this game was amazing, I loved the monster animations probably more than anything in the game, not to mention the designs. With one of the best cel shading jobs I have seen in a game, Enix did a great job on making this an excellent RPG. DBZ Budokai's choppy cel shading looks pitiful next to DQVIII, they need to go take some lessons from SE.

Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance series for PS2, that is my favorite dungeon crawl because it is co-op, or allows it. It was the only RPG that my roommate and I could play, so it wins points simply for that. Few companies make a co-op RPG and even fewer do it right and Baldur's Gate was done perfectly. So much so that my roommate who is always prompt about going to sleep, stayed up 13 hours straight into the late morning afternoon playing it with. That has to be a great game, ^^;

And Honorable Mention Katamari, it is just too wierd not to get mentioned as one of the down right strange games that is so much fun to play. I do not think anyone can really say why rolling up random junk is so much fun, but it just is. We Love Katamari!