Best Game You’ve Never Played (Ever) (Round One)

[SkyPikachu]

Welcome to This Old Neon’s fourth official “BEST GAME EVER!!!” Project.

Round One of the “Best Game You’ve Never Played (Ever)” side-event includes the lowest-seeded games in the category. There are 4 polls of 12 games each. If a game you nominated doesn’t appear in these polls, it probably seeded high enough to get a bye into a later round.

You can vote for UP TO FIVE (5) games per poll, or skip a poll entirely.
The top 5 games from each poll will advance to Round Three.
You can’t change your votes once they’ve been submitted, so click carefully. Voting closes on Saturday at midnight AST.
Don’t forget to vote in the main event and find your way to the other user-submitted categories at https://thisoldneon.com/bge !

Best Game You’ve Never Played (Ever) (Round One)

[Kong Wen]

Poll 1 of 4 - I Don't Know
Assassin's Creed 2 (2009, Multiplatform)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997, PS1)
Dark Wizard (1993, SCD)
Fire Emblem Fates (2015, 3DS)
Grand Theft Auto V (2013, Multiplatform)
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004, GCN)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007, Wii)
Rocket League (2015, Multiplatform)
Shining in the Darkness (1991, Genesis)
Super Mario 64 (1996, N64)
Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988, NES)
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016, PS4)

Fire Emblem Fates is one the crappiest Fire Emblem games in recent memory. I can see how someone who hasn't played it might think it's a gem, but I'm blanking a vote rather than recommending it.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the earliest and greatest exemplars of the explore-action genre, with light RPG elements to boot.

Dark Wizard is a criminally unknown tactical RPG on a hex-grid with multiple story paths and the ability to create your own generic units and raise them into legends. It blows my mind that port-happy Sega hasn't done anything with this game.

Shining in the Darkness is a cute old-school dungeon-crawler and predecessor to the simply amazing Shining Force, so it's well-worth checking out. It probably seems hard nowadays, but it's not as punishing as some of the other entries in the genre from around the same time.

Poll 2 of 4 - I Haven't a Clue
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000, PC)
Chrono Trigger (1995, SNES)
Dragon Force (1996, Saturn)
Firewatch (2016, Multiplatform)
Halo 2 (2004, XB)
Night in the Woods (2017, Multiplatform)
Pyre (2017, PC/PS4)
Seiken Densetsu 3 (1995, SNES)
Sid Meier's Civilization IV (2010, PC)
Super Metroid (1994, SNES)
The Last of Us (2013, PS3)
World of Warcraft (2004, PC)

Chrono Trigger is one of the best RPGs ever. *SHRUGGING MALE EMOJI*

Dragon Force, now there's a killer nomination. Rare Saturn strategy game. It's a shame more people don't have the means to play it.

Same for Seiken Densetsu 3. I wish those rumours of Square bringing a compilation over from Japan would pan out. Playing this game for the first time on Switch would be a really nice treat.

Poll 3 of 4 - It's Anyone's Guess
Beyond Good & Evil (2003, Multiplatform)
Dark Savior (1996, Saturn)
Dynasty Warriors 3 (2001, PS2)
Fortnite (2017, Multiplatform)
Kingdom Hearts III (2019, PS4/XBO)
Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998, Saturn)
Red Dead Redemption (2010, Multiplatform)
Shenmue (1999, DC)
Sonic X-Treme (NA, Saturn)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011, Multiplatform)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017, NS)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, N64)

It's cute that someone nominated Dynasty Warriors 3. Those games really filled up the 3D beat-em-up niche, but it's far from essential, or even really good.

Panzer Dragoon Saga is another killer Saturn nomination. Sadly, it's one that I didn't pick up back in my cheap collecting days, and it's only gotten more expensive now.

Red Dead Redemption is kind of the template of the open-world-exploration game at this point.

Breath of the Wild is a bit too new and a bit too derivative (including of other games in this very poll!) to be recommended as an essential oversight, so I'm leaving it blank.

Poll 4 of 4 - Who Can Say?
BioShock (2008, Multiplatform)
Dark Souls (2011, Multiplatform)
Elite (1984, PC)
Frog Fractions (2012, PC)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater / Subsistence (2004, PS2)
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004, GCN)
Resident Evil 2 (1998, PS1)
Resident Evil 4 (2005, Multiplatform)
Spider-Man (2018, PS4)
The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (2002, PC)
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015, Multiplatform)
XCOM: Enemy [Unknown/Within] (2012, Multiplatform)

Dark Souls is one of the best games of all time, helped redefine the 3D action adventure genre, has great, deep lore, and rewards skill. It's a shame to go into it for the first time without the vibrant multiplayer community there to help as they were back in the day, but still a worthy play.

Frog Fractions is a revelation that deserves to be discovered without any spoilers or prejudgement.

[Pluvius]

Shit, I didn't even realize we had three votes, much less five.

Edit: In retrospect, the only thing I really regret not voting for was Frog Fractions. I also would've voted for SMB3 and possibly Beyond Good & Evil. Most of these games I, well, simply haven't played.

It's cute that someone nominated Dynasty Warriors 3. Those games really filled up the 3D beat-em-up niche, but it's far from essential, or even really good.

I'm surprised you didn't joke about Fortnite. Never mind its quality; it's free, it's on literally everything and it takes about five or ten minutes to play an average match. There is nothing stopping anyone from playing this game if they want to play it badly enough to nominate it for this poll.

Rob

[SkyPikachu]

Shit, I didn't even realize we had three votes, much less five.

Edit: In retrospect, the only thing I really regret not voting for was Frog Fractions. I also would've voted for SMB3 and possibly Beyond Good & Evil. Most of these games I, well, simply haven't played.

It's cute that someone nominated Dynasty Warriors 3. Those games really filled up the 3D beat-em-up niche, but it's far from essential, or even really good.

I'm surprised you didn't joke about Fortnite. Never mind its quality; it's free, it's on literally everything and it takes about five or ten minutes to play an average match. There is nothing stopping anyone from playing this game if they want to play it badly enough to nominate it for this poll.

Rob

Fornite is considered a very successful and popular game but many including me don't want to touch it as its not something I'm interested in.

I don't believe every nomination here is nessarily I want to play this but haven't gotten around to yet.

Edit:I didn't nominate it. Mine were all backlog stuff or new releases like spider man.

[Han Solo]

I'm torn on how to vote in this poll. All of the games I nominated were games I never played, but have received much critical acclaim. Now for voting, should I vote for the games that are the best games I have not played or the best games that I have played? Should I vote for say Super Mario Bros. 3 to indicate people are crazy for having not played said game?

[Kong Wen]

I'm torn on how to vote in this poll. All of the games I nominated were games I never played, but have received much critical acclaim. Now for voting, should I vote for the games that are the best games I have not played or the best games that I have played? Should I vote for say Super Mario Bros. 3 to indicate people are crazy for having not played said game?

This is very much a "whatever you think this poll is supposed to mean" kind of poll. I nominated games I had never played, but when it came to voting, I treated it like a kind of "if you've never played this game, you owe it to yourself to fill that gap" or something along the lines of "if these are all games you haven't played, this is the ONE on this list that you need to play first."

I know there probably aren't many people out there who haven't played any of these, but that's just a way of situating my brain.

[SkyPikachu]

I'm torn on how to vote in this poll. All of the games I nominated were games I never played, but have received much critical acclaim. Now for voting, should I vote for the games that are the best games I have not played or the best games that I have played? Should I vote for say Super Mario Bros. 3 to indicate people are crazy for having not played said game?

This is very much a "whatever you think this poll is supposed to mean" kind of poll. I nominated games I had never played, but when it came to voting, I treated it like a kind of "if you've never played this game, you owe it to yourself to fill that gap" or something along the lines of "if these are all games you haven't played, this is the ONE on this list that you need to play first."

I know there probably aren't many people out there who haven't played any of these, but that's just a way of situating my brain.

Considering I'd played very few of these games and most I wouldn't really consider amazing bar maybe 1 i decided to do the oppisite and vote games I've never played considering that's what the polls called.

[Kong Wen]

Winners of Round One!

Poll 1:
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Rocket League
Shining in the Darkness
Super Mario 64

Poll 2:
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Chrono Trigger
Firewatch
Seiken Densetsu 3
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Super Metroid
The Last of Us

Poll 3:
Beyond Good & Evil
Kingdom Hearts III
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Red Dead Redemption
Shenmue
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Poll 4:
BioShock
Dark Souls
Elite
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Spider-Man
XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within