After having played through the original (no matter how the battle music was getting to me) 7, and 8, I decided to play all the way through Final Fantasy 9.  At first I played the game at a friend's apt until I managed to get a copy of it for the PC.  My general interest was about how the story begins and how the story plays out and of course like most Final Fantasy games, I got hooked.  I'll start with talking about the plot since it was the thing that drew me to playing the game again.  It begins with your main character "Zidane" on a theatre ship doing a show (with staged combat) for the Queen and Princess in an elaborate plan to kidnap the princess.  Things are going well until Zidane meets up with the princess and it turns out that she was attempting to escape and get kidnapped by the theatre ship anyway.  Some of my favorite parts are the fact that the ship is an airship that flyes into the city and then makes a daring escape out.  The begining has a fun and daring character plot that makes the game interesting.  Unfortunately the "fantasy" part starts to fade out when in the end (spoiler)

Perhaps not the most well known of all PC games to hit the market (I think my roommate got it for me for $10) but I feel it is worthy of mention as a “strong” point in the RTS world.  To start, the game is based in Medieval England where the son of a Nobleman must avenge his father’s death by building and conquering many territories throughout England to bring peace and rule.  The game is an RTS with the usual medieval warfare like swords and bows and spearmen but with one major difference, the castles!  I’ve played a few RTS or turn based/RTS that attempted to use the incredible might of a high castle but non have succeeded so well as Stronghold.  The game features an excellent castle building engine that focuses a lot on the walls of your fortress instead of just turrets that auto fire on the enemy.  Towers and battlements, keeps and gatehouses with working portcullises make the game very interesting to play and that’s only the half of it.  The economy (the meat and potatoes of any RTS) is very involved inclueding a three step process to making bread from farming wheat to grinding flour to baking bread.  There are many ways to gain food for your peasants as well as gather materials like wood stone and pitch to defend the walls.  Some of the best parts are the importance of keeping the peasants safe.  Without the peasants, the work is real slow and there’s a chance that the waves of attackers may win due to your not being able to repair your walls in time.  The desire is such that you end up building walls around your precious peasants so that they have a place to hide during times of war and then you open gates that are not being besieged by the enemy.  Another great feature are the methodes for defending the walls such as putting a spearman on the wall to push the ladders down and having the engineers with boiling pots of oil to dump on the enemy can be really fun.  All in all this was a great game that had me playing through many times and just wishing I had more levels to play.

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A truely classic game that has set a standard for what a game should have to keep it interesting.  The game by today's standards is not the best in the world with it's simple graphics and simple storyline but it was still one of my favorite games and was what got me started on console video games.  Zelda was different than most games at the time which were mostly standard side scrollers with lots of jumping action.  Here the hero, "Link" is displayed in a birds-eye-view where he traverses over a huge map of his world of Hyrule.  Battleing with his sword and shield he faces monsters of all kinds gathering weapons and objects along the way to uncover secrets and defeat villians.  On top of it all is the amazing shooting sword when Link's life is at full making a gamer like me try to keep his skills sharp to keep that super power for as long as possible.  This game is rich with dungeon exploration and puzzles to keep a person involved even after having played it several times.
After having played many games since my first Zelda encounter I have developed a taste for vast story added to my games and a reason to be exploring a dungeon besides just looking for pieces of the triforce.  The storyline is pretty basic (probably set the standard for rescueing princesses) with a few fun additions such as only silver will defeat Gannon.  There are still some holes in the plot such as needing to get a letter from the middle of no where to buy potions and that fact that you can select a potion instead of a container heart and never get that container heart again.  All in all the game has been fun for me over and over again making it a series I know and love and a game I keep comming back to.