For me its between:
1. The Last of Us (1 & 2) - the funny thing is while praising it is almost cliché at this point- its really is just THAT good. The story and material isn't even all that profound- its another take on the zombie apocalypse, the ugly world it creates, dealing with infected, but humans are always the worst enemy, etc- well trodden stuff. But Naughty Dogs characters- the voice acting, graphics, animation, gameplay, they are all just pure bliss and without peer. Its ok if you are cliché, when you your execution of the material is complete perfection, and the performances are immaculate. The ending of both games will forever haunt my dreams.
2. The Legends of Heroes' extended Trails series (Trails in the Sky trilogy, Trails of Cold Steel 1-4, Crossbell Duology)- I will lead off and say those who don't like jrpgs, anime, and a lot of the tropes involved- probably won't have their minds changed by this series.
But if you love JRPGS, turn based stuff, story based games, with huge casts of characters, and epic long form storytelling and world building)- here is your rabbit hole to spend the next few years on- basically 9 games, you can spend a hundred hours with each entry on, and a connected world, with ties, plot threads, characters that carry over from series to series .
Yes, you can start and end with playing the Cold Steel Series (most easily available right now on PS4/PS5), and manage to follow most of the plot (but might have to wiki yourself up to date about some other characters/past events), but.... if you can- start with the Trails in the Sky Trilogy (PC), then the first two Cold Steel games (highly recommend on PS4 with the enhanced versions that give the speed boost which enhances things immensely), then try and play the Crossbell Duology (if you can manage playing a game that was never localized West and deal with fan translations or cross fingers and hope the recent Japanese PS4 reissues get brought over by NISA or Xseed), and then finish with the last two Cold Steel games (and cross fingers they bring Hajimari and Calvard west too, since they continue the story further from there)
