• Plague Tale Requiem
• The Walking Dead
• Heavy Rain
• Gerda: A Flame in Winter
• As Dusk Falls
• Disco Elysium

Final Fantasy X

God Eater 2

VA-11 Hall-A

Trials of Mana

The Witcher 3. Sometimes there were no good choices to make and one had to choose the better of two bad outcomes. Sometimes the obvious good choice led to bad things happening to a village. That game was a rollercoaster of emotions.

I also second This War of Mine.

I still think I’ll never play a game that will make me feel like One Shot did. Especially the post game.

Overall I think the life is strange series is okay but in 2 there’s a scene where you have the option to come out to your dad and it just felt so authentic. Like I remember having to pause the game and walk around a little.

Ori and the Blind Forest hit me hard practically before the game had even begun, even more so than Firewatch though it and This War of Mine are definitely up there. Mass Effect (1–3) had a lot of emotional moments for me.

The only game I just couldn’t finish for emotional reasons though is That Dragon Cancer, it hit me harder than This War of Mine. Probably because it hits me a lot closer to home.

“That Dragon, Cancer” made me stop halfway through, not because I was stuck on a puzzle, but because I was crying so hard I couldn’t see the screen.

“Papa y Yo” made me understand how it feels to be the child of an alcoholic parent, on a really visceral level.

“Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture” is emotional in the fullest sense of the word—it made me feel a full range of emotions over the course of its characters.

• Spiritfarer
• Forgotten Anne
• Honkai Impact 3rd (believe it or not)

Katawa Shoujo.

While maybe not exactly what you mean, Tunic.

It made me feel all kinds of things. Mostly it was the mind blowing “aha” moments when I learned something fundamental about the game that had been there all along, I just hadn’t pieced it together, yet.

It’s such a unique game that I seriously doubt could ever be done again.

Spiritfarer gave me a small existential crisis at the end. Edith Finch was heartbreaking but hopeful. House of Fata Morgana was achingly beautiful storytelling.

Mother 3. Not just the sunflowers, but Porky’s end. “Are you sure?”

Journey.

I don’t think it works quite as well nowadays with much fewer people playing it but it was an incredible experience when it first came out. I still play it whenever I need to calm down or just having a bad day. It’s truly a special game to me.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead. I have never had a gaming experience like it before or since. It drew me in and hit me in the feels over and over

The Last of Us first play through, hands down.

Breath of the Wild first ten hours after release, close second place.

I’m told Outer Wilds will be number one when I get to it.

Ether One made me cry a lot

Mass Effect " ... someone else might have gotten it wrong ..."

Final fantasy 14 The main story quests were amazing. Especially loved the shadowbringers storyline.

Soma. If you know, you know.

A game that’s not mentioned here yet: Outer Wilds.

You know how your high school English teacher tries to get through your brain about what “sublime” means and why the Romantic Era writers cared about it so much? The meaning of the word never really clicked for me until I played this game. It is pure, distilled sublime. It presents nature as this simultaneously jaw-droppingly beautiful and existentially scary entity that I’ve never seen any other game come close to replicating. For anyone who hasn’t played it yet, I heavily recommend it.

Note: don’t confuse Outer Wilds with Outer Worlds. They sound similar, but they could not be farther apart

Ok so I’m a huge Final Fantasy fanboi, but for some reason when I first finished Nier;Automata with all the main endings, I just couldn’t help but tear up. For the first time in a long while I felt and thought, yep, that was a masterpiece.

If I can play a game for the first time again, I’d choose Nier;Automata.

MyHouse.wad, a Doom 2 map about friendship and loss that really hits hard and awesome. Read the initial post, read the supplemental material on the Google Drive, if you feel like it and then play it.

Super Mario Galaxy also hit me but more for the joy and amazement at the innovative levels and gameplay. One of the few games I played with my wife to 100 % completion.

Stardew Valley never fails to make me get all weirdly emotional.

I don’t think I’ve ever emotionally connected with a game more than Disco Elysium. It had a profound effect on me, that game can truly do sadness

Thomas Was Alone.

How great writing works

I really cared for these literal blocks on screen.

Haven’t seen Before Your Eyes mentioned yet. It’s not a long game, but it’s got a good story reliving the main character’s life through their eyes. Also, you control it by blinking! As soon as you blink, there will be a time skip.

I can’t believe “Journey” wasn’t in the list.

Tears of the Kingdom, man. It’s far from a perfect game, but the ending is ASTOUNDINGLY good.

• Eliza. If you are a software engineer working on product there’s no game that will come as close as being relatable than this. It’s just perfect. Is very short and there’s barely any interactivity. The “scifi” layer than runs the main plot is good, as it’s extremely believable and well done, but its nothing groundbreaking that has been talked about in other places. But the characters, good lord, the way they speak and experiences they tell… I swear that I have met carbon copies of some of them. Probably the best description of burnout and long days I have ever seen. If you don’t work with software this is just a short, flawed VN. But if you do, I highly recommend it.

• Disco Elysium. IMHO the best writing in any game, and by a fucking mile (planescape was good as well but found DE much better). The phone call was ridiculously relatable and there were several other emotional moments that hit hard as well. The silliness was too much at first but it grew on me as it made the rest of the game much more palatable without becoming dark satire.

• Mass Effect. Okay it isnt as well written as the other two above but still manages to pull emotional strings with the characters. Specially Thane and Mordin.

Dragon Quest 11. Once with a mermaid side story, once with the main bit.

A lot of good ones, but no one has mentioned Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons. Fairly short, controlling two characters simultaneously was a cool mechanic, and the puzzles were fun but not very challenging. It probably hit me the hardest of any game I’ve played. I literally teared up every time

spoiler

I pressed older brother’s interact button in the final chapter.

Omori and the To The Moon series both hit pretty hard for me. Some others that were up there are Undertale, ESC, Secret Little Haven and Night in the Woods. OneShot, though, felt personal in a way no other game has.

• Citizen Sleeper
• Suikoden II
• Journey
• Papers, Please
• Darkest Dungeon (if only through the Narrator lines)
• Undertale
• Celeste
• Gris
• The Lion’s Song
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Silent Hill 2
• Ace Attorney
• Orwell
• What Remains of Edith Finch
• Tacoma
• Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
• SOMA
• The Red Strings Club
• Unpacking