Let’s Play Illusion of Gaia! 
I started doing this thing in 2015 where around my birthday/happy times in spring, I’d play one of my all-time favorite games of all time. I acknowledge that I claim a lot of games as being my favorites week in and week out, but this is reserved for my favorite of all times, like top 10, or in this case, top 5 or even 3 with Illusion of Gaia!
Let’s Play Illusion of Gaia:
What can I say about this game that I didn’t in the freaking dozen plus videos? Nothing really, but I can reiterate what makes it so special to me. I don’t have specific memories playing this game exactly; it is a game I found with my older brother when I was about 10.
The more I write these things, the more I’m probably remembering that we discovered a lot of our favorite games thanks in large part to Nintendo Power. This was before the internet remember, so outside of game themed magazines previewing different games, there weren’t a lot of options to discover the next and best things. Nintendo Power especially had an appreciation for these kind of niche adventure action type games that we loved, and devoted entire issues to them, and this game was one of those examples.
This was my first exposure to Enix, and what a first experience it was. I was elated when they would later team up with another one of my favorite developers in Square as that felt like a match made in heaven.
The music was phenomenal, as was the gameplay, but the strongest aspects of this game were both the story and especially the character development. No other game came close to touching the mystique, mythology, experiences, or personality which this game boasted, and few games come close to achieving a fraction of the life these fictional characters possessed.
If you haven’t seen my let’s play or heard of this game, you play as Will, a seemingly average boy from the small seaside town of South Cape. Of course with virtually every other video game you’ll ever play, we subsequently learn that Will is so much more than that, unbeknownst to him.
He sets out a journey across the world with old friends and new friends whom he meets along the way, and it’s an adventure which has seldom been remotely rivaled in my expansive video game experience over the years. Being a 10 year old boy with an imagination, I couldn’t help but wish that I was Will or maybe even my favorite character in Lance, going on this journey myself.
The game’s story and geography draws from history in a number of actual locations, myths and cultures, cultures I would get more excited about years later when we would cover them in school. This game made me excited about school – it was that good. It’s in my top 3, likely swapping spots with 2 and 3 depending on my mood. I don’t want to go overboard and say that this game was instrumental in making me who I am, but it definitely left a mark.