Dying Light's initial release came out at the perfect time. It really capitalized on the cultural obsession with zombies. I sort of understood it, and I enjoyed it too, but I never really found "my" zombie thing until I saw Dying Light.
The gradual increase from weak and incompetent at fighting, slow and awkward at parkour, to chopping zombies in half with one strike, and passing over buildings like water, is so incredibly satisfying. You really do go from an incompetent feeling nobody to feeling like a living legend.
The gameplay and exploration is where the game shines the most. Exploring Harran, gathering supplies, and taking time to learn where things are in the map when you need a re-up makes the world quickly become easy to memorize, and its small size and the movement being really fun make traversal a joy.
The extra difficulty modes and free added content added a lot of replay value for me. Night runs were also a brilliant idea, letting you explore in the dead of night with more zombies shambling around and the dangerous volatiles, which will give you a progressively more hectic chase until you reach a safe zone or the sun rises. At night, your XP is also doubled, so it's an extremely smart way of having a built in difficulty that you can easily opt in and out of. Much like zombies themselves, Dying Light will have its period of dormancy, but it always seems to come back for me.

I love the atmosphere and gameplay loop in Dragon's Dogma so much, and the way it handles its mechanics, such as character size and weight affecting how much you can carry, make the game feel like it gives you a ton of room to experiment.
Its difficulty is so gear based that getting a new weapon can be the difference between struggling and having an easy time. At first I found myself hating this, since with the dark fantasy setting I thought its gameplay would be just as brutal, but this isn't true. Dragon's Dogma is a power fantasy, through and through. Giving you and your pawn the perfect setup of skills, setting augments, and bringing the right items for any status afflictions can trivialize things. That's not to say there aren't moments where the game can be hard, there certainly are, but nearly every hurdle has some way to handle it in an almost trivial matter, experimenting and finding those ways to "break" the game are just another form of mastery and add to the fun for me.

The Definitive Edition of DQ11 sits in a bit of a strange place. It was originally made for Switch exclusively, and the added content is comparable to something like Persona 4 Golden in terms of what it adds. Eventually it was brought over to other platforms and I'm glad I gave it a try despite already finishing the original release. Visuals did take a hit, but the art style is still very strong so it isn't as easy to notice imo without direct comparisons.
That said, all the quality of life and the extra character stories make the entire package feel much more put together. Crafting now allows you to buy missing items that are in shops directly from the crafting menu, so you don't have to scour the world to find the thing you're missing, and outfit hunting is a lot more fun since you can select outfits for characters to wear without it being dependent on gear, for a few examples.
I found myself getting so hooked on this version of the game, going for platinum was so satisfying and fun. It has a solid story, and the gameplay is a great introduction to JRPG's, although I think the pace is a little slow for the first two acts. Act 3, the post-game, is where the gameplay really shines and hits its peak. I wish it hit that peak a little earlier, but I spent so much time in Act 3 getting everything that it had plenty of time to stay shining.