Topic: Your Top Ten Bucket List Games

I remember we had a bucket list thread many years ago (looked it up, it was actually five years ago!) and thought it would be a good idea to bring it back. For those who aren't familiar with the term in the context of video games, it's basically games that you need to play during your lifetime.

Considering we're talking about a bucket list, I want you guys to limit yourselves to only ten games so that the choices matter. Here's my list in no particular order:

1) Skyrim
2) Elden Ring
3) Red Dead Redemption II
4) The Witcher 3
5) Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
6) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
7) Fire Emblem: Awakening
8) The Last of Us: Part II
9) Resident Evil 2 Remake
10) Earthbound

Only game I don't own from this list is The Thousand-Year Door and that's because Nintendo still hasn't re-released the game since its original launch on GameCube, so I don't have a platform I can play it on. It really sucks because I really want to play it. Other than that, I do need to get around to playing these aforementioned games soon. Skyrim is definitely the first one I want to cross off from the list since everyone but me has played it lol.

I don’t have a list of games that are currently out that I feel the need to play but haven’t. The are of course games like Tales of Destiny that never received a European release. That I would play if I became available. But if I felt a pressing need to I would have already done so already.

@LtSarge You’ve certainly got some good games ahead of you. I know because I’ve already played all the games on that list.

10. Go Vacation Switch
9. Wii Music
8. K-1 World MAX 2005 PS2
7. Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time PS3
6. Cooking Mama 2 NDS
5. Epic Chef PS4
4. Animal Crossing New Horizons
3. Para Para Paradise PS2
2. Youtubers Life 2 PS4
1. Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME PS2 Japan

Hmmm… this got me thinking…

When I think of “bucket list”, as in “things you’d like to do before you die”, I think of things that are extravagant or unique experiences, will require a large amount of planning or inconvenience, things that are so far out of your daily routine and difficult to fit in, yet you feel like would be a major highlight if only you could make it happen.

So a bucket list might be: going skydiving, visiting the pyramids of Giza, running a marathon, or seeing Elton John in concert. Just various and sundry goals that aren’t really goals… more like items on a wishlist if time and money were no obstacle.

So, application of bucket list criteria to gaming is an interesting thought exercise.
After some thought, here are the games I’d like to play and finish before I depart this mortal coil, yet don’t have an immediate plan to fit them in, for one reason or another —

Witcher 3
Yakuza 0-7
Trails of Cold Steel 1-4
No Man’s Sky
Xenoblade Chronicles 1-3
Breath of the Wild
Divinity Original Sin 2
Spec Ops: The Line
Final Fantasy 1-6
Hollow Knight

Some of these I own, some I’ve actually started and just didn’t finish, and some I just don’t have the necessary large chunk of time, the mental energy, or the requisite console. Each will require a kick in the rear to get me to figure out a way to play them.

I know I didn’t exactly stick to the 10 game limit since some of these are series that I lumped together. 😄

The sad thing is, even if I was told I had 6 months to live and had to spend all of that remaining time in a hospital bed playing games all day, I don’t think I’d even be able to finish half of that list. Here’s hoping I have many, many more years left!

Great thread! My top 10 are a combination of games I've played / beaten / loved... alongside backlog items.

In no particular order...

1. Returnal (my personal 2021 GOTY, loved this game so much... got the platinum and beat DLC)
2. Elden Ring (my personal 2022 GOTY - so far - and just an incredible experience from start to end)
3. Xenoblade 3 (on the 'to-do' list, constantly hear great things and want to squeeze in a playthrough before end-'22)
4. Witcher 3 (another backlog game, desperate to play due to how prolific it is)
5. Hades (played this on Nintendo Switch, such a great indie game - would recommend to everyone)
6. Monster Hunter Rise/Sunbreak (longest game ever poured into, approaching 400 hrs... so addictive and so much content)
7. Ghost of Tsushima (played and got platinum, a great cinematic experience with awesome gameplay and DLC)
8. Zelda BOTW (absolutely immaculate game and a great reason to own a Switch. This, Ghost and Elden Ring are my favorite open-world games of all time)
9. Resident Evil 2 - original version (childhood favorite, genuinely scary at the time)
10. FF7 - original version (remake was OK, but the OG game is still such a nostalgia hit... think I played about age 11/12 and it still hits hard)

There's way more than 10, but I'll give it a shot.

1) 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
2) Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
3) Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
4) Koudelka
5) The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
6) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
7) Pikmin 4
8) Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux
9) Skies of Arcadia
10) Xenogears

The only one of these I have serious doubts about getting to at some point is MGS4. I expect to tackle the others in the next year or two.

@CJD87 Wow, and I thought I was late to the game with The Witcher 3!

I'd be open to calling it my favorite WRPG. Absolutely stellar experience.

Xenoblade 3 isn't quite my favorite JRPG, but it's probably top five. Really fantastic game. My GOTY so far, alongside Triangle Strategy and Elden Ring.

@Ralizah Nice to see TotK on your list - this is probably my most hyped future release by a long shot (Elden Ring DLC a close 2nd, albeit unannounced)

I was actually set to start Witcher 3 last summer, but got unexpectedly sucked in to FF7R instead! Funnily enough I own W3 on Switch and also PS…. But masochistically I’m more tempted to go for Switch.
I know that it is far from the ideal way to experience W3, but from a ‘time-sink’ perspective in likely to be able to plough in more hours due to portability/travel

Yes I recall you are one of a few regulars that constantly say good things about X3, and it makes me excited to start! Just polishing off some Sunbreak builds and then really hoping to start

Do you have any beginner tips for X3? I’m tempted to start on Normal difficulty, but would like a challenge. In your opinion would ‘hard’ to be too challenging? (I’ve only played XCDE, not X2, so conscious a lot of the mechanics will be new etc)

@CJD87 BotW is one of my all-time favorite open world games, so I'm very excited to play the sequel. I've also been wanting a new Pikmin for almost a decade now, and Fatal Frame 4 for more than a decade, so the Direct had a LOT of exciting stuff for me.

The Witcher 3 is surprisingly playable on Switch. Both PS4 and Switch target 30fps, which was, IMO, the biggest downgrade coming from the PC version, which ran at 60fps on my rig. I mean, it obviously looks worse than the PS4 version probably does, and some texture work here and there sticks out as particularly rough, but if you're going to want to play it off the TV, it's a worthy sacrifice. I own it on PC and Switch because, as I see it, the Switch downgrades offer me hybrid freedom in return. The PS4 version is just flatly inferior to my PC version, so I didn't feel the need to grab it. Maybe the PS5 version will look and run best when that eventually releases, but who knows when that's on the cards.

The Switch version looked awful until a fuller settings menu was patched in, though, since, by default, the anti-aliasing makes the entire image extremely blurry. Turn off the anti-aliasing, jack up the sharpness, and the game looks so much better. More jaggies, obviously, but that's not a huge deal to me.

Normal difficulty in XC3 is a little on the easy side, but I've heard Hard mode is VERY challenging, so play that at your own risk. Although I believe you can change the difficulty at any time during the game, so it might be worth experimenting with. Playing on Normal, the biggest recommendation I have is avoiding the bonus XP mechanic like the plague. At campsites, you'll be able to use extra experience points gained from completing quests to level up your characters. But if you do the huge amount of side content in this game, you'll be overleveled anyway. The biggest risk with this is that the number of Class Points you gain from battles reduces dramatically when the enemy is a lower level than you. Even worse, if the difference is 6+ levels, you won't make any progress toward unlocking new classes for your characters. So bonus XP is just adding on insult to injury. I would only use it if I was rushing through the game, but then, if I'm rushing through the game, I probably wouldn't be messing with side-quests in the first place.

Also, when the mechanic becomes available, be sure to keep switching our your character classes to level them up so you can gain access to unlockable master skills. If nothing else, make sure the character who initially inherits a class when it's first accessed maxes out their class level, since that's the main way you gain access to a specific class of major quests in the game.

I recommend ALWAYS checking out question marks on your map when you're exploring new areas, since many of these lead to new Heroes, which lead to new unlockable classes for your characters.

Finally, continually return to older colonies as you progress through the game, as they all have nests of side-quests that unlock over the course of the story, and each colony has its own set of characters and emergent storylines as you play through these quests. This isn't like XC1 where the side-quests are garbage. Many of them are actually plot-relevant, and even the ones that aren't still expand on the world-building, flesh out relationships between NPCs, etc.

This feels closer to XC1 mechanically, aside from the change to auto-attacking and inclusion of arts cancelling. Don't worry about being confused, though, because this game's mandatory tutorials explain everything in almost excruciating detail. Do keep in mind that you'll miss some late-game references if you haven't played XC2. They're nothing major (the game stands on its own), but a few cameos and visual callbacks won't mean much to you.

@CJD87 I think you misunderstood this a bit. A bucket list would be things you haven't done, so listing games you've already played shouldn't count.

@KilloWertz Haha yeh yeh... I had every intention to make a list purely of games I hadn't played, but decided to put my own spin on it for 2 reasons:
1) My backlog is ridiculously huge, would require me to whittle down a list of nearly 100+!
2) A list of games I haven't played wouldn't provide me with an opportunity to shill the almighty Returnal!!

You publishing yours mate? No doubt your bucket list has opened up somewhat since you got on the Switch train?!

@Ralizah Yeh I do recall you sharing your tastes on this forum, and I did think that the recent Direct would have a shed ton of games to interest you.

Thanks for your feedback on both W3 and X3... Your W3 comments especially have helped me determine that the best platform (for me) to play would be Switch. I try to reserve my PS5 for playing as much 'next-gen' stuff as possible, and my playtime on this is also very limited due to work/travel. I've heard though that the W3 is probably as close to a 'miracle port' as the Switch has, and the devs did a miraculous job in getting it to work as well as it does.

The plan with Switch is to wrap up a few more builds for Sunbreak, then have a quick hiatus from 'big games' to tackle the new Monkey Island - released Monday. Then kick off (finally!!) X3 and aim to wrap by Xmas... at which point I'll prob dive into either FF7 CCR or Witcher3.

How many hours would you estimate a W3 playthrough would warrant? I don't want to rush, but equally don't want to do every single side quest... And have you played the DLC? I hear it is excellent.

RE. X3 Difficulty - following your advice I'll start on normal and then rank it up to hard if things feel stale

@CJD87 I'm probably going back to Sunbreak extremely soon. I had a nice 130+ hour break from it between XC3 and Splatoon 3, but I'm ready to check out the new title updates and see everything that was added in recent months. It'll serve as a nice daily grind sorta game while I play a couple of story-based PS4 and PC games I've been meaning to get to.

Another impressive thing is that The Witcher 3, afaik, is the only major release to date that has used the more expensive 32GB Switch carts.

I probably clocked around 100 hours in TW3 with a complete playthrough of the base game, completing most of the quests I encountered, and also full playthroughs of the two DLCs. Hearts of Stone is more like a really elaborate sidequest chain, but Blood and Wine actually gives you a brand new region to run around in, complete with a more compact main narrative and set of side-quests. I'm sure people could probably drop 100 more hours into it if they do everything, but I found the game's length to be pretty reasonable, even when doing sidequests (and you will want to do sidequests; they're the best part of the game).

Keep in mind, I TOTALLY ignored Gwent. I hate minigames like that. I'm sure that shaved a lot of time off my total. I didn't get a gritty dark fantasy open world game to sit around playing medieval Yu-gi-oh with a bunch of starving peasants.

@Ralizah Sunbreak has been a pretty great time so far in fairness, especially now I 'understand' the general mechanics of the MH franchise a little bit better (Rise was my entry game). The title updates have been strong, and the new Quiros crafting setup for weapons/armor really opens up the potential for personal & unique builds. The game is now a world away from the end of base-Rise, where basically everyone had to run full-Valstrax armor due to limited choice! I main GS, and there are at least 8-10 viable end-game weapons (vs base game, where it was basically Narga!) Send me an invite if you see my online, always up for a MP hunt!

I'll keep you posted on W3, although I might have to disagree with you on Gwent... I'm looking forward to this! Mind you, I have a sickness when it comes to mini-game abuse... probably spent more time playing BlitzBall in FFX vs playing the actual main game ha

I'm going to pick my bucket list based on if I could replay 10 game before I die

1. The witcher 3 - simply my favourite and greatest game I've ever played
2. Final Fantasy 7 - the first game that truly blew my mind - thinking end of disc 1
3. Final fantasy 14 - best story in a FF game ever
4. Elder scrolls oblivion - yes skyrim was bigger but not better for me personally
5. The last of us - emotional rollercoaster
6. Halo original trilogy - the music alone still pushes my buttons
7. Half life - wow just wow
8. Uncharted 2 - took things to a whole another level
9. Red dead redemption- I love cowboys
10. Mass effect trilogy - the absolute benchmark along with the witcher 3

@CJD87 But, but, that would require me to put in extra work too. You didn't, so why should I? Seriously though, I probably will at some point. Given that I have a whole other console to consider, it would take some time. No way I could run one off right now.

I also have a feeling you will get addicted to Gwent. I highly enjoyed Gwent when I played The Witcher 3 on PS4, which kind of made it all the more disappointing when I finally tried Thronebreaker last year and didn't like it much since they made Gwent more complicated to the point I didn't find it fun. Not surprising that the storytelling was still really strong, but I never finished that game. Regular Gwent though was great for people who love mini-games.

@KilloWertz @CJD87 @Ralizah Jumping in in the ‘mini-game’ mini discussion. 😅

In the 5 or so hrs I played Witcher 3, I didn’t like Gwent. Usually I do get distracted by mini-games — for example I can completely relate to pouring hours and hours into Blitzball! 😄 Did a ton of Chocobo racing in FF, and more recently (I mentioned this somewhere last week) I really like the Fort Condor game in the FF7R DLC.

But for some reason Gwent didn’t click with me. However I have to admit I didn’t give it much of a chance.

On a wider note, I’m counting on the W3 PS5 version to win me back to trying it again. I feel like a fake-gamer for not really liking it the first go-around.

@RogerRoger I think I may have said this before and your memory is likely to be much better than mine, but AC3 could be a difficult place to jump in. The main historical protagonist is new and isolated to that game, but the modern day storyline is carried over from the other games. The modern storyline is pretty forgettable and nonessential, but AC3 is the finale of the main story arc that started with the first game. So it might be slightly confusing during those sections. Otherwise, it’s a great entry in my opinion.

AC Origins is an easier first entry from a narrative standpoint. It’s a reboot of the franchise, in a way, but I think you probably realize that.

But I totally agree with you about the intimidation factor when series have so many entries like that. I was just saying how that’s the same mental block I have for Yakuza.

@RogerRoger Rogue Leader on the Cube was one of the first games I ever played funnily enough. I think it was a launch title so we had it really early on. It’s utterly brutal and I’m terrible at it but it’s a really great game. If you struggle with getting a GameCube in decent condition these days then you can always play the games on an older Wii as long as you have a controller and memory card. Still a hassle but a bit easier than the annoyingly expensive GameCube market. If you’re alright with CEX then they’re selling Rogue Leader for £6 so you could probably cobble together a setup for Cube games using a Wii fairly cheaply.

Hmm, quite a tough one. There are games in my backlog I aim to play at some point, but always seem to put off, usually because of new releases taking priority. Others have no realistic prospect of being played unless there's a future gamepocalypse and all releases abruptly stop. So for this list I'll focus on a few of these apiece, as well as some that seem slightly further out of reach, that I would nonetheless one day like to play before I croak. Also a few titles that were never localised in English.

1. Xenogears
2. Chrono Cross
3. Final Fantasy V (the only non-online Final Fantasy I've never played)
4. Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations 2
5. Snatcher (and Policenauts)
6. Fire Emblem Awakening
7. Earthbound (and if I do play it and like it, Mother 3)
8. Baten Kaitos Origins
9. Half Life 3. Will this ever be released?

@RogerRoger I'd also recommend Assassin's Creed Origins as a good starting point, because there's such a clear defining line between it and the earlier games. You won't feel lost by jumping in at that point.
To echo what @nessisonett said, I recently bought Rogue Squadron II for £8 on eBay. It isn't as difficult or expensive to track down as many other GameCube games. I also bought a second hand Wii for £20, so honestly the barrier is nowhere near as high as you think. If you really want to play those GameCube (and Wii) games, I say go for it!

@CJD87 @KilloWertz Oh my god, Blitzball. That's literally one of the reasons I won't replay FFX: I hate the forced match near the beginning of the game. With every fiber of my being. If I replayed it, I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything that came before it, because I'd sit around dreading the moment it came up.

I NEVER like minigames, it seems. Especially card games. Don't like Gwent. Tried and failed to enjoy the one in FFIX. Hell, Splatoon 3, has a collectible card game minigame of sorts. Tried it last night and, predictably, hated it.

We'll see how the one in Forbidden West fares, although I predict I won't enjoy that, either.

@Ralizah 👀 I have a save on FFX Vita literally at the forced Blitzball match