Curious to hear what the criteria for “masterpiece” is, otherwise I think it is just peoples’ subjective opinion of what makes a great game that they also think others might agree about being a great game. Genuinely curious, interested in discussion, not saying this to shut down any of the answers here.
Historically a masterpiece has been a (or the) work that demonstrates an artist is capable of utilizing their medium to its fullest extent, i.e. it has been mastered. Per ye olde Wiki:
Historically, a “masterpiece” was a work of a very high standard produced by an apprentice to obtain full membership, as a “master”, of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts.
In that light, I’d say the best qualified would be games that completely utilized the capabilities of the platform they were designed for or, perhaps of interest to more people, expanded what everyone thought could be done with those systems. Games which were furthermore well polished and complete, and did not have much room for improvement taking into account the constraints they had to work with at the time. (For instance: No duh we could make Mario 64 run at a higher framerate and have better textures to look nicer on hardware now. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t arguably a masterpiece of its time, on the system it was on.) This doesn’t just have to be technical stuff – It could be the way the game used storytelling, its gameplay mechanics, or anything else.
Then Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom belong to that category - run smoothly as fuck on one of the lamest consoles there is, and are beautiful and complex.
Spyro and Crash trilogies on the PSX, as well as the Quake 2 port, would definitely merit being called technical masterpieces
On the original Xbox, Phantom Dust would fit that bill, despite being a commercial failure at the time. The tldr is that you create a collection of spells (attacks, traps, dodges, curses, buffs) and try to grab them and the “mana” during the real time duels, in order to beat your opponents. Terrain is semi destructible and you have to take into consideration the trajectory of your spells - www.xbox.com/games/store/…/9PCDNBHR11MR
Back when i had free time, id always log in before everyone else and handle the stuff that they were terribly inefficient at, then just basically dick around with them. When time became more of a premium, it got harder and harder to game because i wanted to play the game and not hang out in social spaces
I see Outer Wilds here but not Nioh 2, so I’m posting about Nioh 2.
Soulsian adventure with ninja gaiden blood, extremely high amount of endgame content, wild depth of character building, lots of avenues to increase your character’s power with many “correct answers” to the question of “how should I make my dude stronger”. Dropped a while before the most recent push for graphical fidelity with AI upscaling/antialiasing so it actually runs well on a large majority of steam hardware surveys machines.
It’s hard early on, but provides the player with tons of options when it comes to progressing through stages and bosses, flexible movesets for each class of weapon and access to potent tools like Gun and turning into an enemy that killed you a dozen times the first time you saw it briefly. The endgame goes beyond replaying through the game into dungeons made of fragments of the stages and some more unique maps (The Abyss). There’s a hefty amount of individual bosses to learn, and incentive to do some of the more fun fights in the game multiple times - a lot of which do not require a run back through a stage to get to them. The game does itself a service by breaking up gameplay into chunks with a world map you launch missions from, some of which are just a singular straight up boss fight.
Have you played the mainline souls titles? The NG+ system in Nioh 2 leads out into new unique maps (The abyss) rather than being the same game with revamped enemy placement and health nine times lol.
After trying Code Vein because of similar hype and dropping it 2 hours in, I expected the same from this game, but goddamn it’s phenomenal. Absolutely worth playing through. It feels like a love letter to Fromsoft, rather than trying to just do what they do - the inspiration is obvious, but it still feels like its own unique thing.
Celeste. Emotional narrative that seamlessly blends with the gameplay, which implementa never before seen accessibility configuration, enhanced by one of the best soundtracks ever. All while being cheap, indie, and one of the best speedrun games ever made
Prey, System Shock 2, Outer Wilds, and Undertale are fully-realized microcosms where the primary game is unfolding the complex origami of the setting. All of them absolutely beautiful to experience.
Do you think Return of the Obra Dinn would belong alongside these or is that game too flawed by comparison? I ask because I myself am not sure.
Oh, actually Disco Elysium would fit right in here as well as a “fully-realized microcosms where the primary game is unfolding the complex origami of the setting”.
Wow, thank you all so much for the advice and insights you’ve shared! Your answers helped me tremendously in gaining a better understanding and it’s been super fun to read them all! I think I’ll pick up Sonic x Shadow Generations first and work my way through the other titles if I enjoy it, which I’m sure I will. Can’t wait to properly dive into the franchise! Oh, and I’ll definitely read those comics that were mentioned, they sound like a lot of fun. Thanks again, I’m really grateful :D
bin.pol.social
Aktywne