What are your favorite levels/areas in gaming history?

[Fabulously Olivier]

What missions and explorable areas left a real impact on you? Whether it was excellent gameplay, memorable quests, or unique enemies and environments, share your love here.

 

Here's a few of mine to start.

 

Fire Emblem - Defense Missions

The peak of content for my preferred playstyle, and a chance to live out my Battle of Helm's Deep fantasies. Gabel Castle, Elincia's Gambit, Fort Nox, CQ10, etc. are all among my favorite missions in the franchise.

 

Guild Wars - The Jade Sea

A solidified sea of pure jade, inhabited by land pirates riding massive siege turtles, and populated by all manner of adapted sea creatures. No other setting in gaming feels so original and uniquely beautiful.

 

Guild Wars - The Echovald Forest

The opposite end of the spectrum. The pirates of the Jade Sea are at war with the gothic Kurzicks in their solemn petrified forest full of cathedrals and rivers. Here, players fight angry tree spirits and hostile wildlife.

 

Guild Wars 2 - Drizzlewood Coast

Guild Wars 2 is endlessly ambitious in its content, and with this map comprosing of a forest, river ford, and icy mountain, they successfully created a simulated Realm vs Realm style MMO conflict against PvE enemies. And it is wonderfully executed and epic in scale. Chef's kiss.

 

Diablo 3 - Act 3 and SMTV - Act 3

Similar universes with similar third acts. Massive ongoing battlefields against demons lend a sense of scale and grandeur to these dark tales.

 

Trails of Cold Steel 3 - Dark Dragon's Castle and Spiral of Erebos

Honestly singlehandedly redeemed what would have been my least favorite Trails game. The story rapidly reaches a climax with an epic final and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack.

[vanguard333]

Missions:

Path of Radiance & Radiant Dawn - the defense chapters

 - Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn easily have the best chapters of any FE game that I've played, and the defense chapters stand out even among the other great chapters.

Tears of the Kingdom - Wind Temple Approach

 - I never expected what is essentially a platforming section to be one of my favourite missions in a Zelda game, but here we are: gradually going from the ground to the sky through climbing, ascend, and jumping from skyship to skyship during a blizzard is a really fun experience.

Fire Emblem Three Houses - chapter 12 (Crimson Flower)

 - In every other route of Three Houses, chapter 12 is a rather underwhelming defense mission that pales in comparison to the Tellius games. In Crimson Flower, it's one of the best seize missions of any FE game. The enemy units are constantly throwing new things at the player as the player gets closer to seizing Garreg Mac, but in a way that feels very fair and provides a nice, almost rhythmic back-and-forth as the player adapts to everything thrown at them. One thing I find very boring is an RPG where it all comes down to optimally customizing the playable characters and the fight itself is nothing, and there are a lot of chapters that are like that in Three Houses; this chapter isn't one of them.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - The Tower of Spirits

 - I wasn't sure whether to list this as a mission or an explorable area, but I ultimately decided on mission since each section is a place that the player is only expected to visit once. The puzzles and challenges are fun, but there is one thing that makes this area of the game stand out: Spirit Zelda. Spirit Tracks is the only Zelda game where Nintendo made the brilliant decision to have Zelda be Link's adventuring companion, and the Tower of Spirits is the part of the game where that decision shines the most. The puzzles revolve around having Zelda possess animated suits of armour called Phantoms and having Link and Zelda work together to solve the problems, and it works. 

Pokémon Platinum - Climbing Mt. Coronet & The Torn World

 - Again, I thought at first of placing this in the explorable areas category, but the fact that it is a mostly linear gauntlet that the player that mainly serves as a main story mission means that it belongs here. Climbing Mt. Coronet was already a climatic (if a bit tedious) moment in Diamond & Pearl; the addition of the Torn World in Platinum after the player confronts Team Galactic at the summit elevates it even further to the point of easily being one of the best missions in all of Pokémon. The atmosphere is fantastic, and the gameplay makes great use of the Torn World being, well, the Torn World: a place heavily implied to be an antimatter realm.

 

Explorable Areas:

Metroid Prime Trilogy - Skyview, Elysia

I will admit that I really like sky cities, but this location is fantastic even regardless of that. The atmosphere is fantastic, exploring the location is a lot of fun, and I like the missions that occur in the location.

 

I'm sure I'll think of more later, but these are the ones I can think of right now.

[Saint Rubenio]

Dishonored 2 comes to mind. That game had its faults, but its level design is masterful. Every level is excellent, but the main highlights are the Clockwork Mansion, where the level's layout twists and turns around you as you manipulate mechanisms, and you can even go into the bowels of the manor on your way to your target; and A Crack in the Slab, a technical marvel where you seamlessly, instantly travel between present and past in a once opulent, now ruined state. Your actions in the past have influences in the present that, again, manifest themselves instantaneously. Check some gameplays out, if you like, the levels are really something to behold.

[Shrimpica]

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - The Perfect Run

This level. The music. The difficulty. Everything. The Ultimate 3D Mario test.

The World Tree - Xenoblade Chronicles 2

The place you've been vying for the whole game...you finally reach it, and the story goes full gear. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 imo has one of the best final acts, and the final dungeon also complements that. I might even say it's in my fav. list because what happens during the dungeon, and then you reach the final floor (that has it's own amazing battle theme btw) and...Wow... Just wow.

Phantasmagoria - Trails in the Sky the 3rd

The final act of my fav. trilogy. This final dungeon splits your party into 4 groups, each proceeding to finish their part in the dungeon and fighting a boss, with the MC group fighting the final boss. I love me some party splits, and add in amazing music, the goodbye messages left in by the localizers, the Final choice before entering the dungeon...and you have the perfect goodbye for the trilogy!

Chapter List - Fire Emblem

Spoiler

Thracia 776 Chapter 5

This. This map. Has everything. From Story and gameplay prespective. It kicks ass. The only thing i really hate about it is the chest at the bottom right. Like why, Kaga <.<

May not be my fav. Chapter in the series, but definetly my fav. in T776 and where Thracia peaked imo.

Conquest Chapter 10

The best defence chapter in the Series. Period. So much stuff to do, so much stuff to take care of. And while super tough, it’s also very fair.

In general, i want the conquest gameplay designers to work on FE again. Put them together with FE3H Story peeps for extreme hype.

Radiant Dawn Endgame

So far, the best Final boss in the seires. The map itself is nothing special (infact, it’s quite plain), but this is the first final boss in the series to have so many different attacks, AOE stuff and stuff you have to take care of first. It just isn’t an onverglorified mob unit like most of the final Bosses in the Series.

Three Houses Chapter 7

This one. The game hypes it up for all the game until there. And damn does it deserve all the hype. And the music. THE MUSIC. The unique Objective To defeat more enemies than the other 2 classes that forces you to play super aggresive. The amount of strong enemy units! Damn it Hilda stop 24 x 2’ing my whole Team. Damn it Golden Deer stop kicking Blue Lion’s ass, i need to kick their ass first! Poor Blue Lions, got sandwhiched between me and Golden deer xD. A Super Hype Battle.

In general, two things i give Three Houses credit for is that almost every map has multipe side objectives, and that the game is extremly Player Phase focused (I don’t wanna EP those 50+ ATK Wyvern Squad with their 62 Brave ATK! boss while my tankiest unit had 20 Prt xD)

Radiant Dawn 2-E

Also known as Elincia’s Gambit. One of the best in the series. If only Haar didn’t trivalize it so much XD.

Conquest Chapters 22, 23, 24

The Maps where you face Takumi, Sakura and Hinoka. Especially Sakura’s and Hinoka’s. So damn well design. So goooooooooooooooooood. How you’ve to play around the dragon veins, how you’ve to take the enemies’ Skills into consideration (not to mention their high quality), and how you navigate the map in general.

Sadly, they are followed by that atrocious Ryoma map.

Did i mention i love Conquest’s Map design? xD

Three Houses Chapter 12

The last chapter of Part 1. Wether on the attack or the defence, i found this map to be quite a fun challenge, and pretty damn fun. Honestly, it kinda reminds me of Radiant Dawn 3-13, but biiiiiig. Not to mention the Story relevance of the map. It’s where everything really starts kicking. One of the best gameplay/story integration maps in the series, without sacrificing either of them.

Berwick Chapter 3

Usually, when i see green units that needs to be protected, i find myself hating the map. Not the case here, as the whole split into 3 combined with the turn system makes for a really fun map!

Berwick Chapter 12-1

Berwick Fog is amazing, and this map makes the best use of it. Kill enemy scouts so you don’t get sniped, use your own ones and hide them, etc. Combined with the story beats and the music, makes for an amazing experiemce.

Vestaria Chapter 17

A prison infiltration map with so much stuff to fo. Like wow. It almost made it to #1 of all time if it wasn’t for the fact that half the map is on wasteland terrain while half your army is Horses. Still super fun despite that.

Engage Chapters 10, 17

Engage has some amazing boss fights, and these 2 chapters are specially strong at that

Engage 23, 24, 25

They are like Engage's version of the Conquest late game maps, to test everything you learned so far. The enemies even have something akin to Dragon veins!

 

[OuendanCyrus]

Spiral of Erebos is one of my favourite tracks in video games ever. The dungeon was very straightforward, but the track is fantastic, and the fact that it persist in battles is great. I would also like to bring up the Sun Fort at the end of Trails from Zero as well, when A Light Illuminating the Depths starts playing and you see the cast run into the dungeon, it's such a fantastic buildup.

13th Street from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin - It plays a remix of Iron Blue Intention, a fantastic track, and the stage itself is fantastic, it's a late afternoong-evening Victorian-era city infested with monsters, almost like an apocalypse scenario. It may sound a bit silly to say, but the background of this particular map always fascinated me.

[Integrity]

7 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Guild Wars - The Jade Sea

A solidified sea of pure jade, inhabited by land pirates riding massive siege turtles, and populated by all manner of adapted sea creatures. No other setting in gaming feels so original and uniquely beautiful.

fucking based

 

i have nothing to add to the thread at the moment you just needed to be shouted out

[lenticular]

Sorrow's Furnace (Guild Wars). Yeah, there are a lot of Guild Wars areas that I could choose, because I spent so many hours in that game and have so many fond memories. The Jade Sea and Echovald Forest are both great shouts, and I also have a lot of fondness for Vabbi and the Fissure of Woe, but I'm going to say Sorrow's Furnace as my favourite. A big sprawling underground dwarven mine complex, occupied by the evil faction of dwarves, and complete with ancient ruins, steampunk style tech and everything else you could want in a dwarven mine. Then add in a fun quest chain (assisting the slave revolt was a personal favourite), and the chance to get some of the best weapons in the game, and this place was just an all around winner.

The Palace of Darkness (The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past). So you've played through all the dungeons on the map, collected the three mcguffins, secured the Master Sword, and then defeated the evil wizard who kidnapped Zelda. Then you're teleported into the Dark World and learn that you need to beat another seven dungeons and collect another seven mcguffins. Hardly revolutionary now, but when the game was new and I was a kid, seeing the sudden expansion of the scope of the game like that was amazing. And as the first dungeon of the Dark World, the Palace of Darkness managed to really hit it out of the park on two fronts. First, it's a significant step up in difficulty from what went before. The training wheels have come off and things have got real. Second, it has just enough similarities to its Light World counterpart, the Eastern Palace that you notice the whole "dark reflection" thing going on, but nowhere ner so many that it would feel boring, repetitive or derivative. This place is great.

Vash'jir (World of Warcraft). These days, I would rather gnaw off my right arm than go anywhere near World of Warcraft, but back when I used to play it, this zone was my absolute favourite. This is not a popular choice, because it's an underwater level and everyone hates underwater levels. Except for me. I love underwater levels. And this one was so damn pretty and made me feel at peace. Except when I was fighting naga. That part wasn't so peaceful.

Cascade Kingdom (Super Mario Odyssey). Another somewhat unpopular opinion. Not that most people dislike this, but few people seem to like it as much as I do. It's not one that I ever really see come up when people talk about favourite kingdoms in Odyssey, but I love it. I honestly couldn't tell you why, though. Maybe it's the music? Maybe it's the big waterfall? Maybe it's the compact size? Whatever it is, playing this level just makes me happy.

Planet (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri). Is it cheating to name the setting for an entire game? Well, I'm going to do it anyway. SMAC had more story than any other 4X game that I'd played at the time, and most of that was down to the setting, Planet, which was almost a character in its own right. It felt properly alien, and then seeing its development over the game both surprised and delighted me.

Afterlife (Mass Effect 2). Mass Effect 2 is an action RPG and while there are times when it leans into the RPG side of things, there are other times when it leans more heavily into the action side and basically just feels like a shooter. But then for one mission ("Samara: The Ardat-Yakshi") there is no shooting at all, no action at all. It's all just wandering around talking to people, which is such a great change of pace for the game, and was only so memorable because the rest of the game is so shooty. And then to make it better, much of the level is spent in a cool futuristic nightclub with heavy ties to the criminal underworld.

The Lab (Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt). Does anyone else even remember this game? It was such a great looking game for the SNES, and while all of the levels had their own great unique looks, the lab was my favourite. What can I say, I just like the mad science aesthetic, and this had Van der Graaff generators, Bunsen burners, dripping acid, the lot.

Tower of Eternal Flames (Ancient Domains of Mystery). There aren't that many games that have levels where environmental hazards truly feel hazardous. As befits the name, this tower's fires will mess you up if you aren't prepared for it, not only dealing a lot of fire damage, but also burning up much of your best equipment. Managing to get a character past this challenge always felt really satisfying and signified that they were a serious contender to go on to the end game and maybe try to pick up an elusive victory.

The Border House (The Longest Journey). I love The Longest Journey, and this place was the perfect way to open the adventure, both for the player and for the player character, April. It's a perfect thematic prelude.

[ping]

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

Planet (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri). Is it cheating to name the setting for an entire game? Well, I'm going to do it anyway. SMAC had more story than any other 4X game that I'd played at the time, and most of that was down to the setting, Planet, which was almost a character in its own right. It felt properly alien, and then seeing its development over the game both surprised and delighted me.

Beat me to it which means you win a science victory. SMAC is still my favourite 4X game of all time and it's mostly down to the setting, given that the mechanics are a bit outdated at this point in time.

Ust Natha (Baldur's Gate 2): A Drow city in the Underdark that you infiltrate at the order of (and under the illusionary guise provided by) a good-aligned dragon. I'll admit freely that I'm a terrible goody-two-shoes when it comes to RPGs, but because this is a city where you can throw a rock and almost certainly hit somebody who deserves to have rocks thrown at them, you can scheme and backstab your way through the city without feeling bad for making the fictional characters sad. The final resolution where you royally screw over both (equally evil) sides is very satisfying.

Midgar (Final Fantasy VII): Honestly, if the entire game (or at least 80-90%) would've taken place in Midgar, FF7 might've been my favourite of the series (...as far as I have played it). It's very tightly packed - literally, in terms of gameplay, and narratively. You always have some objective to go after, and I think the game gets the feeling of a downtrodden slum across very well.
Shout-out to the opening sequence of FF9, which also is the game at its best. Flamboyant, dramatic, silly, entertaining. But given how much shorter it is than the Midgar part of FF7, I still consider Midgar to be the best sequence of any FF game.

Mêlée Island (The Secret of Monkey Island): I think I might still be able to play through most of this part of the game by heart even though it's been a long-ass time since I've played this as a kid. I just love the gritty aesthetics combined with the silliness of the dialogue and riddles. In a similar vein, Blood Island from Curse is far more memorable than any other part of that game.

[RibsChirino]

Super Mario 64 - Dire Dire Docks

Best underwater level of all time imo hahaha other than that I'd have a hard time picking. Probably the whole castle in Castlevania: SotN

[Original Alear]

Super Mario World: Tubular.

Perhaps the greatest spark fatness has achieved in gaming. I guess it might be easy once it's memorized, but I died a lot on it.

[Capt. Fargus]

Hmmm... tough question. Dunno where to start really

Temple of Fiends revisited in Final Fantasy maybe, because you cant help but imagine what the rest of the world might be like in that era, not to mention the outside appearance of the pristine shrine vs the ruined one from the present