People say that playing games can sometimes make you feel like a kid again, and I don’t disagree with that at all. Even by bringing you back to a time of nostalgic fun, it can leave such a powerful impact on you that it changes you, sometimes for the better (like learning something about yourself) or worse (spiralling into a short-term game addiction). It’s the games like these that leave this kind of impact that I love the most.

I like to describe myself as among the most casual of gamers; most games that are popular with my friends don’t really interest me, and I struggle to play sometimes with fatigue easily coming not long after I begin playing (usually around half an hour!). There’s an exception to this, though, with games that appear to transcend this barrier somehow. Thinking about now about it now, I’m quite intrigued and am interested to learn more about what parts of them speak out to me the most.

Could it be the countless hours spent by the developers to build the worlds I’ve come to love? Is it the characters in the games, and how they interact with each other and their environments? To me, it feels like one of those things that come intuitively: something (or some things) in the game just vibe well with you, and you grow to love it or them the more you play.

It’s hard for me to define what kind of games I love. Simply describing a genre won’t do — since I’ve yet to explore any in great detail — but I can still say that a few stood out to me. More importantly, some might even have left an impact on me, usually emotionally, and challenged me to reflect and change for the better.

It sounds like a far reach saying this — after all, they’re just games — but I certainly value the things I take away from the games I’ve played. On top of that, I really value the emotional impact games can have on me. It can feel like Schrödinger’s emotion after finishing a game: when I sit in silence after finishing an impactful game, it can simultaneously feel meh and profound at the same time until I think about it more. That’s pretty interesting to me!

Here’s a list of games that hav left some form of impact on me. I’m not the best at translating what I feel and think of these games into words on a screen, but I think they’re an exciting avenue to describe and discover just what about these games really connects with me. Each of these games are ones that found me at the right time and right headspace to fully enjoy them and what they have to offer.

Arash’s List of Good Games™️®️©️

• OMORI
• No Man’s Sky
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Starfield
• Star Wars Jedi series
  • Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• Final Fantasy series
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy (Remake Intergrade, Rebirth)
  • Final Fantasy XVI

OMORI

OMORI hides a deceivingly powerful story so out of left field when you consider its otherwise innocent and happy-go-lucky art style. I doubt that it’s a game meant for everyone, especially with the dark themes that lay within (particularly surrounding isolation and psychological responses to past trauma) and the game’s plot moving at a snail’s pace. It took me a while to push through the first few hours of the game (meant to introduce me to basic mechanics), but it quickly unveiled its true nature, layer by layer, as more of the worlds opened up.

I first played OMORI in 2020, and I can’t exactly recall how I came across it to begin with. After finishing it, the game gave me such a deep insight into what it meant to convey such a complicated and morally complex message in the form of game media. I still recall how it felt as I pieced the truth behind the story and its messages together. There’s a part in the game where, after many ambiguous moments and vague metaphors ( Spoiler: the SOMETHINGS you see , the mild jump scares) it suddenly gets straight to the point and lays everything out for you. That abrupt change, to me, captured the essence of the game: storytelling done right.

The most memorable thing that still hits me to this day is OMORI’s soundtrack. It ties in so well with the story and it’s so powerful that playing a G and then a C major is enough to send memories flooding back and raise the hairs on the back of my neck. If you were listening to the soundtrack with no knowledge whatsoever of the game, you might get surprised at the range of the tracks in the OST. To me, the OST has a mix of everything! These are some of my favourites:

• See You Tomorrow and Crossroads remind me of sunsets and the warm hug of a time once passed. They share the same motif, but if you consider them in their contexts they are entirely different levels of meaning. I liked what a comment under Crossroad’s music video said, and I think it represents both of them aptly:

  See You Tomorrow mood: Yeah, this was real fun, let’s do this tomorrow again!

  Crossroads mood: I cherish every moment we spend together and I’ll miss you a lot until tomorrow.

• Friends. reminded me why this game had a “horror” label to begin with. It starts off exactly the same as its innocent counterpart Lost At A Sleepover, but quickly diverges to catch you unawares. It makes sense when you consider that it Spoiler: happens during the BLACK SPACE segment .

• World’s End Valentine and BREADY STEADY GO are absolute bangers and I find myself relistening to them time and again. When playing the game, they make you feel like you’re fighting against foes with indomitable spirits and, overall, remind me of a 10/10 gaming moment. Also, have you heard the orchestral version of WEV? *chef’s kiss*

• Dear Little Brother… and Remembrance. are simply moving. They’re placed at just the right time, and every note of their already minimalistic production hits all the more.

Also not to forget are (arguably) the biggest tracks of the game: DUET and My Time. How the game weaves its soundtrack throughout moments of the game and effortlessly creates strong mental associations between moments should be worthy of scientific research.

I like what this Reddit post had to say about DUET. Spoilers ahead!

We associate this theme not just with Mari and Sunny’s younger life when they were happy before the trauma, but we also associate this song with the time that we start playing the game. With the story’s climax already tearing at you [sic] heart strings, it goes even further to make it personal. And when you finish the game, hearing a different variation of the theme in the main menu screen, it really emphasizes an end of a difficult journey (consider it an end of the player’s journey) and the beginning of Sunny moving forward.

With a god-tier soundtrack and meticulously well-paced story, OMORI is one of those games that feels just as harrowing as they are powerful foods for thought. What happened to the characters is a most unfortunate exception in life, but it was interesting to see how their handling of that event shaped the people they eventually will become in the game. It’s interesting to see how the game is just as psychological as it is enjoyable, and that’s why this game has been on my mind for years now. I only wish that I could play this game for the first time again.

Final Fantasy series

To no one’s surprise, the FF series excels at doing fantasy. It has such an extensive history with gaming that spans generations of consoles, and I’m quite surprised to see the series continuing to this day. I’m very much a latecomer to the series, and I’ve only played the most recent games — XVI and the remake trilogy of VII. Even so, these games have immersed me so much into their own separate, though thematically connected, worlds that I’m now interested in venturing into the other games in the series. And they aren’t cheap¹!

Also, thought it might make sense to put it here since it’s common between the games: I really wish chocobos and moogles exist in real life.

FFVII Remake trilogy

It isn’t easy to decide where to begin with this trilogy. It’s a bit unfortunate that I wasn’t born in the era when the original FFVII came out, but I’m so glad that I got to introduce myself in the same universe through its remake trilogy currently underway. I’m so spoiled by today’s graphics, though, so I probably can’t bring myself to play the original FFVII even if the story is “better” or “the OG”.

I might’ve played FFVII Remake Integrade before FFXVI, so it might’ve been my very first encounter with the series. I think it checks all the boxes — I was certainly hooked on the experience of the game, though there were some areas where I felt it lacked. Generally, the cast is stellar and completely recognisable: the spiky blonde Cloud, pugilist and childhood friend Tifa, brash but big-hearted Barrett, the optimistic and interesting Aerith, and everyone’s favourite pet wolf-cat Red XIII.

The cast of characters instantly made me fall in love with the game, and I loved how each character feels more than just characters you get to control once in a while. I’m glad that the remake trilogy fleshes out the backstory behind the team, and focuses particularly on how their own backgrounds led to them taking up fighting for the planet against the Shinra Electric Power Company. The fact that the characters have some screen time with each other so that you can see how the banter exists makes me love the entire group all the more.

On top of that, let’s talk a bit about the core themes of the game, which I think were quite fascinating: there’s the idea of environmentalism, where we’re fighting for the planet whose lifestream — mako — is being exploited for power. The environmental effects are drastic, anywhere from desertification to the loss of natural life. There’s also the message of politics, and I found it quite interesting how the world isn’t run by governments but by corporations — powerful enough to have their own military personnel, govern a region of land, and effectively have the resources to run itself like a country.

FFVII Remake provided a good foundation that allowed the audience to understand the plight between the protagonists and Shinra, as well as the overarching themes of saving the planet (…among other things), and I found the way the story was written to be really engaging. The story in the remake trilogy also heavily deviated from the original FFVII, so it’s quite interesting to see where Square Enix and its developers will take the story — now, all it has left to do is to wrap up the trilogy while working on its third game.

I really love the mechanics of the game. In February-March 2025, I wrapped up the main storyline of Rebirth and found such a major step up from its predecessor, Remake Integrade. Remake Intergrade laid the foundation by having a pretty robust skills system (with materia and SP, whatever that stands for) that I think was taken from the original but renewed. Rebirth went ham with the minigames, and I think that just made the game that much more enjoyable (and maaaaaybe justifying the 100+ GB size of the game). Don’t even get me started with Queen’s Blood.

Lastly, the music: there’s a piece called On Our Way that other people have seen parallels to OMORI’s See You Tomorrow. I never thought about it, but I think they both sound alike — you can definitely expect it to be in my music playlist with OMORI’s OST. I also fell in love with the music related to the moogles — both idly around the mushrooms and during the minigame — because it captures their cuteness so well. Don’t get me started on the motifs that the soundtrack uses, and I think it was masterfully arranged with different themes representing abstract and concrete ideas — whether specific characters (like Tifa’s and Aerith’s themes) or the game as a whole (the main theme of FFVII).

Alright, I’ve written the past seven paragraphs in one sitting. Now, I can breathe ooooooout.

FFXVI

I can’t exactly recall where FFXVI fits in the timeline of me playing FF games, but my best guess would be sometime between FFVII Remake Integrade and FFVII Rebirth. This was the latest (at the time of writing) installation in Final Fantasy, so it takes place in a completely separate world from the other FF games.

What I found most fascinating about XVI was the combat system and depth of the plot. It has the beats of your conventional singer-player story-driven game (with its own fair share of side quests and dragging), but I ultimately enjoyed it. I was far from a Devil May Cry player, so I found the combat system pretty challenging but satisfying to learn. It was there, too, that I learnt of the common summon entities that were shared between the FF games. Spamming Bahamut’s Gigaflare on a staggered enemy, using Deadly Embrace on a semi-staggered enemy, and getting Ultima’s abilities post-game ? Yup, thank you.

It was this game that really left that impression on me that FF excels so well at building up a fantasy world. It really immerses you in it with characters that are well-explored, a world with a decent story beat, and gameplay mechanics that are both familiar and new at the same time. It’s pretty neat!

The plot of this story was something that I found pretty interesting and something I could follow too. I liked that it pulled the idea of elemental magic and infused it with themes of real-life human concepts like inequality and human greed. It was also later on that I realised that the elemental Eikons were recurring elements that exist throughout the franchise, so you might come across names like Ifrit, Bahamut, and Odin in different ways throughout the games.

How do you enjoy games?

The best part about gaming is the experience itself: what you make of it as you’re playing it and the lessons you learn walking away from it. I found myself wanting to appreciate games more deeply, and here are some ways that I’ve done so:

• Taking breaks (duh) — when I feel like I’ve reached a pivotal point of the story and could use a mental break, I don’t push it too far. It kills two birds with one stone by building anticipation for the next time I play and also allowing me to process and understand where the story is going so far. I can even try to see ahead and guess what a game’s story might turn into!

• Taking screenshots and gameplay recordings — I think this is underrated but was also something that came pretty unexpectedly to me. I realise that it’s good to take screenshots or record the moments in the games that you’d like to remember. For me, they included cutscenes of character banter, key moments during the game, and general photogenic moments. I found that this lent me an avenue to look back at the games and remember specific moments at which I’ve taken them, which I think ties in well with the concept of memories and photography.

If you’ve read this far, I’d love to hear about your favourite games and what you make of them! I think games are more than just avenues of entertainment; they have the opportunity to leave a deeper impact on us than we initially know.

Thanks for reading!