Late to the party, but got here through the link in the music thread lol. I have a number:
- I'm team "Zelda Breath of the Wild was overrated". I didn't dislike it, certainly, but it's middling on my list of favorite zelda games overall, and towards the bottom if you just include 3D entries. I thought the exploration was really fun, but I absolutely hated everything about the combat. From the fragile weapons to the (initially) limited inventory space that I didn't realize you could expand for like 50 hours because the game encourages exploration
inv expansion location spoiler
And the forest to expand your inventory is on the opposite side of the map from where you start
I prefer longer full dungeons to the several broken up shrines and small buzzlebox dungeons, etc. Again not a bad game or anything and I am looking forward to seeing what they do with the sequel but ugh.
Conversely, this is somewhat nostalgia driven but Majora's Mask is still my favorite Zelda game.
I didn't mind Pokemon Sword/Shield as much as a lot of peopled seemed to. The streamlined lighter story I felt was in-line with what I expect from pokemon (since their "plot' writing is rarely strong anyways), and as someone who plays Pokemon PvP I appreciated many of the QoL features added for training new pokemon easier at the like. Some things were definitely frustrating, like the removal of the battle replay recorder and butchering of the PvP match timer... but I digress. It's still the most played game on my Switch behind only Splatoon 2 because I started to get into the official tournaments right before COVID started. That was a lot of fun~
I think these are both relatively unpopular opinions within the series, but Tales of Xillia and Tales of Hearts are some of my favorite entries because they have my favorite combat. Conversely, while I liked Graces' story, I very much did not like its combat which seems to be a fan-favorite.
Disgaea series, 3 is still my favorite. Most folks I talk to that enjoy the series seem to put 3 towards the bottom lol. Love the school setting, hero flavoring, and main character cast. 1 is close behind, then 4, 2, and 5.
Despite how ridiculous the story has become, I'm still a pretty strong kingdom hearts fan. I know a lot of people hopped off the train at or around 2, but I'm still going strong lol. Birth By Sleep is my favorite entry, with 2 following close behind probably. Unlike a lot of folks, I quite enjoyed Chain of Memories' card battle system.
Of the 3 modern Persona games, 4 is my least favorite. Similarly to the mario ranking in the OP, that's not at all to say that I dislike it- quite the contrary, great game. But my ordering of preference is 3 > 5 > 4.
Persona rant essay that you probably don't care about
I like 3's story and characters the best, and also think that it landed on the most balanced gameplay loop (where it encourages you to do school -> social link -> dungeon crawling -> get tired and call it a night most days). The shift that 4 and 5 made where the dungeon crawling takes up the after school time slot distorts the balance of the game somewhat imo.
Now in order to still give yourself plenty of time for social links, it's beneficial to try and rush the dungeons and complete them in as few days as possible because most social links happen in the same time slot, so if you take your time completing the dungeon you miss out on a bunch of those. I found that, as a result I would do large chunks of dungeon crawling followed by large chunks of social stuff instead of having a more even balance of all of the elements.
I'm also not a fan of the "deadline to complete the dungeon by". It means that the story pacing can get really wonky if you complete the dungeon too early on because things just freeze until the deadline passes. I preferred 3 where you knew that something would happen on the full moon day, but otherwise it had more liberty to sprinkle minor events throughout where it wanted them.
Lastly, now that all of the party members have a social link, I found that in 4 and 5 a lot of each character's development was hidden away inside of them rather than being woven into the main story, and as such they're optional which means that the story can't refer to them. Each character has development within their "focus arc" and then kind of stagnate throughout the rest of the game. Not completely, of course, but you miss out on a lot of the larger developments they have throughout their social link and none of that reflects in the story which is a shame.
All of that said, the gameplay definitely gets better as time goes on, 3 has the weakest dungeon by far and least QoL features... so that's why I put 5 above 4 on my list. There are elements of 4 that I preferred to 5, but 5 has much better gameplay so I prefer that one.
edit:
oh one more! I've never tried Minecraft purely because I can't stand its aesthetic (and don't really feel like trying to track down a bunch of mods to "fix it"). People always think it should be my favorite game since I work in the architecture design field but nahhh. I play Dragon Quest Builders instead