Ok. Mom got me this game for 2012 xmas. I didn't even fucking knew what skyrim was. I heard about it, but what the fuck was skyrim? Idk. I played too much guitar hero at the time I literally didn't give a fuck for any other game. Until Skyrim came around and saved me from possible arthritis (I really played a lot of guitar hero). So that being said, Skyrim made me remember why I loved open-world games so much. Also it is an RPG you can play without the RPG mindset. You can be whatever the hell you want. You want to be a mage that wears heavy armor and has top notch stealth skills? Go for it man (that was actually me on my first run). I spent the whole 2013 playing this game, exploring it to the very end, and I found it very very rewarding. Sometimes I just find a really cool spot to chill in the game at night and look at the sky and how beautiful this game also was. Sometimes I put a bucket in the store clerk's head and robbed the store. FUN FACT: when I was starting the game for the very first time everyone was talking about the dragonborn, the one that comes and saves us from the dragons and shit, and I thought "Damn, I gotta find this dragonborn guy, he's gonna save us for sure". Then when I kill the first dragon and the dragon soul gets absorbed into me and I'm like WTF!? Then you can FUS, and I thought to myself "holy shit...................I'm the dragonborn". Truly, one of the most mind-blowing plot twists in gaming for me. I was really not expecting. LIKE I SAID I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about skyrim before playing it. Turned out to be one of my favorite games of all time <3

> me 6yo at a party with my parents
> there's this annoying kid 6yo around me
> yes I was 6yo and found other kids annoying already
> he asked me to play on my gameboy
> i was like "OK but only when I lose"
> you never lose on Warioland 2.
> fuck off kid.

Next time I teach a writing class I'm going to use this as an example of why it's important to hire an editor.

It's clearly stitched together from a large team working independently of each other. Which isn't necessarily bad. Unfortunately the writing is weak, especially in the common route, and the protagonist is hard to sympathize with. He views women as puzzles to be solved and takes an overly logical approach to every relationship. Hisao follows Neil Degrasse Tyson on Twitter, I bet. That said there are some neat moments in the relationship stuff and a lot of other little things I wish more visual novels would pick up on.

I will cut myself off here before I launch into an essay about its origins on 4chan with regard to both the roommate character and the questionably Japanese setting. If someone else wants to write that essay, I will gladly read it.

The first game I ever played on the PS2 and I hate to admit it but it was appropriately magical. Easily the best Harry Potter game, it's one of the few that has its own art style - granted it takes the majority of designs from the movie, but a large portion of the levels and characters evoke the cartoonish artwork that sold the original books. The first time you have to use stealth (à la Metal Gear Solid) it is terrifying, the first time you duel with Malfoy it is exhilarating and the first time you fly your broom freely around Hogwarts it is liberating.
I understand a lot of this comes from nostalgia but I replay Chamber of Secrets often and it always remains one of the few entries that capture intended charm and escapism of the original stories.