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The Most Intellectual Video Games of All Time
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:02 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse **The Most Intellectual Video Games of All Time**
1. **Xenogears (1998, PlayStation)** A deep wound of a game, its scars tell a story of gods, men, and the machinery that binds them. A labyrinth of psychology, Gnosticism, and Nietzschean dread, wrapped in combat that is both brutal and poetic. You fight, you learn, you suffer. And when the screen fades to black, you wonder if you were ever in control.
2. **Policenauts (1994, PC-98 / Saturn / PlayStation)** A hard-boiled dream of space and crime, painted in the flickering neon of a dying future. Kojima builds a world both alive and sick, filled with men who have outlived their purpose. There are betrayals, cigarettes, and the kind of silences that stretch long into the night. Every answer leads to a deeper question.
3. **Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998, Saturn)** A game built on atmosphere and isolation. The world is ancient, its bones cracked, its people fading. You ride a dragon across the ruins of something greater, chasing the ghosts of civilizations long buried. The story unfolds like a whispered legend, its truths only half-remembered.
4. **Baroque (1998, Saturn / PlayStation)** A fevered hallucination trapped in a dungeon. Every corridor is a descent into madness, every enemy a reflection of sins unspoken. The game does not explain itself. It only punishes. You piece together a shattered world through cryptic words and dead men’s memories, but meaning is fleeting, like smoke in the dark.
5. **Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (2003, PlayStation 2)** A world reduced to nothing, a boy turned into a demon. The earth is a battlefield for ideologies, each one grasping for control over what little remains. You choose who lives, who dies, and which god will rise. The game does not care about you. It only asks that you decide.
6. **LSD: Dream Emulator (1998, PlayStation)** There is no story, only sensation. Colors shift, walls breathe, doors lead to places they shouldn’t. Logic is abandoned. You wander through a dream that is not your own, watching it change with each step. There is no winning, no losing—only the quiet hum of unreality.
7. **I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995, PC)** A machine hates you. It tortures you, not for information, not for purpose, but for amusement. You play as the last shattered remnants of humanity, each broken in a different way. The game presents choices, but few of them are good. Morality is a weapon, and you are always outgunned.
8. **The Silver Case (1999, PlayStation)** A detective story wrapped in code and cipher, built for a player willing to stare into its abyss. Suda51 does not explain, does not guide. He only presents fragments of a city, a killer, and a conspiracy that unfolds like a dying star. The answers are there, but only if you’re willing to dig.
9. **EVE: Burst Error (1995, Saturn / PC-98)** A noir puzzle where every move is the wrong one. Two lives, tangled in a web of secrets, their paths intersecting over crime and desire. The game gives you two perspectives, but truth hides between them. Solve the case, or let it consume you.
10. **Pathologic (2005, PC)** A town is dying, and so are you. A plague moves through its streets like a slow, hungry god. You play as one of three doomed souls, each trying to understand the sickness in their own way. But the town is a riddle, and you are not guaranteed an answer. You can only endure.
These are not just games. They are arguments, essays, riddles posed by minds that do not care if you solve them. They are stories that leave scars, worlds that demand thought. They do not hold your hand. They let you drown. |
Date: February 14th, 2025 9:09 PM Author: Chest-beating lake theater stage Baroque is one of the first Games I considered picking up with my Saturn if I ever get one.
https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5680767&mc=2&forum_id=2 |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:17 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse I guess it’s on Switch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_(video_game) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:19 PM Author: Chest-beating lake theater stage The original version takes place using a first-person perspective using tank controls, navigating 3D environments while interacting with 2D sprites of characters and enemies.[4][5][6] The remake mainly plays from a third-person perspective using entirely 3D graphics, using full analogue movement with more action-based gameplay and combat, in addition to remade graphics and adjustments to the progression.[2][7] (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661728) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:22 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse What you don’t know won’t hurt you (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661740) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:24 PM Author: disturbing private investor windowlicker Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a perfect embodiment of cosmic horror. It doesn’t just play with your mind—it devours it.
$anity is not merely a stat, but the very fabric of reality itself, which the game twists and tears, piece by piece.
Every crack in the psyche mirrors the horrors of the cosmos, the ancient evils beyond human comprehension. It’s an experience that feels almost like an existential intervention, forcing the player to confront their own fragility and lack of control.This is true intellectualism—not the abstract puzzles or linear morality plays of lesser games, but the raw confrontation with the unknown, the uncontrollable, and the imminent collapse of reason itself.
It goes beyond storytelling or even gameplay—it becomes an unsettling meta-experience, where you, the player, are not just part of the narrative, but are drawn into it, losing yourself in the same madness as the characters you control. And in the end, that’s the real horror—the revelation that reality itself is the ultimate puzzle—and we’re all just fumbling in the dark, waiting for the inevitable unraveling.
This isn’t a game that just asks you to think—it forces you to feel what it means to lose your mind, piece by piece, while the very world around you begins to slip away. This is true intellectualism in its darkest form, the kind that doesn’t let you walk away unchanged, that leaves you questioning not just the game’s world, but your own. That is the essence of existential dread.
The XO touch? Eternal Darkness didn’t just explore horror; it embodied the Mahchine™’s grinding inevitability—where every fragile piece of our existence is slowly being consumed, whether we see it coming or not.
Mainlining |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:25 PM Author: Chest-beating lake theater stage the Crowning Achievement of Gaming (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661752) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:28 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse Dennis Dyack has been unemployed for 15 years. Western game development is a tough and Scummy business. If you think that game was so good then you’ll have to admit it’s bc if Japanese Supervision. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661759) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:29 PM Author: disturbing private investor windowlicker Dr. Maximillian Roivas: I tried... I tried to tell them... But they wouldn't listen to me... Damn them... DAMN THEIR EYES! They didn't believe me... Strange creatures... The world in peril from unseen foes... The death... THE DARKNESS! Instead they jeered and threw me into this forsaken place... A place of empty souls and fevered thoughts... reeking of foetor and decay! Thinking me mad with delirium! [chuckles] Dr. Maximillian Roivas: The fools cast away their hopes of salvation by locking me in this damned asylum! MAY THE RATS EAT YOUR EYES! I am now lost to your cause! [sobs] Dr. Maximillian Roivas: The Darkness comes! It will damn us all! |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:29 PM Author: bonkers son of senegal degenerate crrrrr (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661762) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:31 PM Author: disturbing private investor windowlicker Dr. Edward Roivas: Remember me, Alex? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661769) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:29 PM Author: bonkers son of senegal degenerate Where THE FUCK is Eternal Darkness?!?! (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661761) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:30 PM Author: disturbing private investor windowlicker Pious Augustus: I had no knowledge of what was to come. Nor did I care. How the knowledge changed me... It will also change you. As you read this, you will come to learn fear as I have. You too, will come to understand, or you will perish. To think that once I could not $ee beyond the veil of our reality... to see those who dwell behind. My life now has purpose, for I have learned the frailty of flesh and bone... I was once a fool... (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661766) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:31 PM Author: Chest-beating lake theater stage cowshit refuses to acknowledge it because it was a Gamecube release (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661768) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:32 PM Author: disturbing private investor windowlicker Dr. Edward Roivas: Dear Alexandra, If you are reading this Alex, then I am surely dead. Knowing that the police will contact my only living relative, I made sure to leave this message for you. As I write this letter, Pious Augustus is waiting for his chance to strike me down for what I have done to the Guardian City. I believe I have slowed Augustus' plans, but not stopped the completely. He will still try to bring his Ancient into this world. You must continue what our ancestor Max has started. You must gather the Artifacts and call forth an Ancient to combat what Augustus brings into this world. Of the artifacts there are four, but one of these is in the clutches of Pious himself. They are: The Black Heart of Mantorok The Claw of Chattur'gha The Sigil of Xel'lotath The Veil of Ulyaoth Your skill in the arcane science will not be as strong as Pious', who has had two millenia to prepare his gate. You will need all the remaining artifacts to match his power. It all rests with you my dear. I wish you well in this desperate act. I wish I had more guidance for you but I am at my wit's end and feel I am running out of time. Your Loving Grandfather, Edward. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661771) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:39 PM Author: Cerebral hominid menage Where is Final Fantasy Tactics, Morrowind, Eternal Darkness… (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661792) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:42 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse In the top 25 imo (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661802) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:44 PM Author: Anal Idea He Suggested Metal Gear Solid 2 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661806) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:44 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse A triumph (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661807) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:44 PM Author: Chest-beating lake theater stage 3,4,5 have much crazier and more esoteric narratives imo (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661809) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:49 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse 3 does not 4 is insane but it’s largely an extension of 2 5 is almost like a western developed game story-wise. |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:50 PM Author: Chest-beating lake theater stage yeah I was mostly thinking of 4 but I remember 3 being totally batshit and awesome, or maybe that was the handheld one or something (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661828) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:54 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse 3 had cool bosses like 1 kind of but the story wasn’t insane at all. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661839) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:45 PM Author: Cerebral hominid menage Surprisingly prescient in hindsight (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661811) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:50 PM Author: charismatic dark meetinghouse Why would you be surprised (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661825) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 6:35 PM Author: Anal Idea He Suggested Yes
https://youtu.be/jIYBod0ge3Y?feature=shared |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:44 PM Author: Hairraiser cream center mexican Myst
Chrono Trigger |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:45 PM Author: Offensive Unhinged Cruise Ship Newt Earthworm Jim 2 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661812) |
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Date: February 14th, 2025 9:51 PM Author: diverse mother Civ V, actually (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48661830) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 8:47 AM Author: Ocher pea-brained office dysfunction planescape torment by far (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662398) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 10:37 AM Author: Painfully honest arrogant institution It started off good but they got lazy af in tge last act (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662520) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 11:02 AM Author: appetizing zippy orchestra pit tbf, so do most classic CRPGs. part of disco elysium's triumph is managing to land a final act. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662586) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 11:03 AM Author: Painfully honest arrogant institution Yeah its a shame (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662591) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 11:04 AM Author: Painfully honest arrogant institution Also disco's last act is just as rushed bro did u play the game? Lmfao ur just thrown into the last act and it's mostly text choices (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662597) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 11:09 AM Author: appetizing zippy orchestra pit i played the shit out of the game. did you? it's largely text choices. the last act ties everything together (what you discovered, chose, etc.) rather nicely within that framework. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662616) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 9:57 AM Author: Violet Rough-skinned Mental Disorder Tank Leisure Suit Larry (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662452) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 10:10 AM Author: Painfully honest arrogant institution I really can't take a list seriously that doesn't list persona (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662470) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 11:03 AM Author: appetizing zippy orchestra pit drakengard III was extremely underrated as an intellectual game imo. especially if you like convoluted plotlines, yoko taro might be better than kojima. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48662594) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 11:46 AM Author: Flickering resort elastic band Shit list, very losery, here's a better one in no particular order:
Yakuza 0 Yakuza Yakuza 2 Yakuza 3 Yakuza 4 Yakuza 5 Yakuza 6: The Song of Life Yakuza: Like a Dragon Like a Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Like a Dragon: Ishin! Yakuza: Dead Souls
TBD: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 2:27 PM Author: odious massive parlor How have none of you tried “CUCKHOLD SIMULATOR: Life as a Beta Male Cuck”. You really have to see the screenshots and clips of the gameplay.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141550/CUCKOLD_SIMULATOR_Life_as_a_Beta_Male_Cuck/ |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 6:36 PM Author: Bisexual sooty preventive strike nowag Cruisin USA (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48663834) |
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Date: February 15th, 2025 6:43 PM Author: multi-colored parlour dopamine if engineering counts you must include Kerbal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48663870) |
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Date: February 16th, 2025 4:34 AM Author: bonkers son of senegal degenerate Actually it’s Portal 2 ime (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#48664922) |
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Date: December 1st, 2025 6:10 PM Author: an entire lifetime of chasing after the wind Portal 2
Eternal Darkness
MGS 2
Shenmue series
Xenogears
Bioshock series
C&C: Tiberian Sun |
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Date: December 1st, 2025 6:05 PM Author: click here to Learn More (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#49475413) |
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Date: December 1st, 2025 6:08 PM Author: Yummy Phase Pol Pot I actually watched a Xenogears play through in part because of posts about it on this forum. It is truly a triumph. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5681054&forum_id=2/en-en/#49475420) |