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Game of the Year 2023 At a certain point toward the end of 2022, perhaps around the time that the Suikoden I & II Remasters were announced, I got it into my head that 2023 was going to be The Year of the RPG from Japan. There were a lot of things planned for release including the aforementioned Suikoden remasters (sigh, lol) but also Final Fantasy XVI and the Pixel Remasters for console, among others for sure. I honestly don’t know or remember how the idea formed in my mind, I certainly wasn’t coerced or persuaded into it, but I decided early on that for 2023 I would play nothing but RPGs from Japan. For the entire year. As a gimmick. … … Yep. All told, I played 30 RPGs from Japan over the course of this year and I will now rank all of them for you. I will be brief for the bottom entries don’t worry. My relationship with this genre of video games goes far back and in my childhood years it was the most prevalent type of game I played. In recent years that’s been less and less the case. But this year has allowed me to reexamine my feelings toward the RPG from Japan and coalesce in my mind what exactly it is about these games that draws me to them. The list of games I am about to present is fairly normie for those familiar with the genre. My selection process for what to play was entirely limited to what was available on PS5 and contains a smattering of older titles that I had played previously, but perhaps had not given a proper playthrough, a few from well-regarded franchises that I had completely overlooked for one reason or another, and a few new releases thrown in for good measure. Many of these titles were included in the higher tiers of PS+ subscription. So, without further ado I present to you:  30. Oninaki – 2019, Tokyo RPG Factory. Composers: Shunsuke Tsuchiya, Miriam Abounnasr Time played: 5 hours Completed: no This certainly is a game that exists. 29. Tales of Berseria – 2016, Bandai Namco Studios. Composer: Matoi Sakuraba Time played: 45 hours Completed: no This game really wants you to like its characters. They were alright; the skits a bit contrived and good god there are so many of them. 28. Chrono Cross – 1999, 2022, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda Time played: 36 hours Completed: no Played this game at release and never made much progress in it. Really hoping to give it a fair shake with this Radical Dreamer Edition re-release but wasn’t able to finish it. I have a lot of issues with this game but in the spirit of the thread I won’t get into it here. Let’s just say my problems with it have nothing to do with the game’s relation to Chrono Trigger and leave it at that. 27. Scarlet Nexus – 2021, Bandai Namco Studios/Tose. Composer: Hayata Takeda Time played: 24 hours Completed: no This game felt like it wanted to be both an action RPG and a visual novel. Would have been better served being one or the other. 26. Rogue Galaxy – 2005, Level-5. Composer: Tomohito Nishiura Time played: 30 hours Completed: no Level-5 and PS2 jank and charm in spades – for better and for worse. 25. Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song – 1992, 2005, 2022, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Kenji Ito Time played: 18 hours Completed: no Last year the SaGa Frontier remaster taught me to love SaGa game mechanics. This year Minstrel Song taught me that it pairs better with a little bit of narrative. Great battle and progression systems, just needed a little bit more of a story to keep me interested. 24. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster – 1987, 2023, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Nobuo Uematsu Time played: 15 hours Completed: platinum The OG. Played this game in several of its iterations over the years but this was the first time I actually completed it. The orchestrations are excellent. A remaster that leaves nothing to be desired. 23. Star Ocean: First Departure R – 1996, 2007, 2019 – tri-Ace/Tose. Composer: Matoi Sakuraba Time played: 26 hours Completed: yes Very ambitious and ahead-of-its-time for a SNES game. A simple narrative and battle system but crafting and skill points and party relationship mechanics; all very early examples of what would soon become staples of the genre. 22. Grandia – 1997, Game Arts. Composer: Noriyuki Iwadare Time played: 48 hours Completed: no Had this game at release but don’t think I ever got to disc 2. This time made it all the way to the point-of-no-return final dungeon gauntlet before taking a break to avoid burn-out. I don’t think I ever realised that this game was by the same developer as the Lunar series but it’s very obvious in hindsight. Colourful, energetic characters and a janky but engaging battle system, this game celebrates the spirit of adventure and it really does feel like one. Enjoyed revisiting this one after so many years. 21. Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits – 2003, Cattle Call. Composer: Koji Sakurai, Takayuki Hattori, Yuko Fukushima, Masahiro Andoh, Takashi Harada. Time played: 50 hours Completed: no I also played this game at release but had little to no recollection of it. With its tactical battle system and split protagonist narrative it feels this game was trying for something a little bit different and mostly succeeds with a charming devotion to its concept. Made it all the way to the final boss but died right at the end. Didn’t feel up for making a second attempt. I guess in the end the future refused to change… 20. Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster – 1988, 2023, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Nobuo Uematsu Time played: 19 hours Completed: platinum My first serious attempt at playing this game. Its quite incredible really how different the systems are in this game compared to the first Final Fantasy and only releasing a year later. I understand this original version has a bit of a reputation but the improvements in the Pixel Remaster version made enjoying what this game has to offer easy and accessible. 19. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – 2013, Nihon Falcom. Composers: Hayato Sonoda, Takahiro Unisuga, Saki Momiyama, Tomokatsu Hagiuda, Yukihiro Jindo. Time played: 69 hours (nice) Completed: yes First time playing a Trails game but figured I’d give it a go since there are so many of them and they are increasingly becoming available on PS5, and if I liked it, there’d be plenty more to play. I did like it. A few quibbles here and there but very excusable ones. The thing that draws me most about this series is the continuous and persistent world between instalments and a focus on the political machinations of that world, a bit like one of my favourite RPG series of all time Suikoden. Shout-out to Machias Regnitz for winning the Gooniest Character of the Year Award. 18. I am Setsuna. – 2016, Tokyo RPG Factory. Composer: Tomoki Miyoshi Time played: 23 hours Completed: yes I really liked this game. I think most people didn’t. There are complaints about the battle system: an inferior rip-off of Chrono Trigger. There are complaints about the narrative: an inferior rip-off of Final Fantasy X. Accurate observations but none of that bothered me. I am Setsuna is firstly a vibes-based game, and deliberate design choices such as the singular and inescapable snowy biome and the subdued and sombre piano soundtrack are all in service of a quiet and meditative vibe which I don’t often come across in the games that I play. This was an experience that I very much appreciated. 17. Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster – 1990, 2023, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Nobuo Uematsu. Time played: 17 hours Completed: platinum My first attempt at playing Final Fantasy III was with the DS version, which I bought a DS specifically for. I liked it well enough and put it down when I died to a boss in the final dungeon and got booted all the way back to the beginning of that dungeon. Thanks game. FFIIIDS is notorious. FFIIIPR is glorious. As with the other two NES Pixel Remasters I feel that this is now the definitive version of the game. Lovingly touched up both graphically and mechanically to bring what could be considered a more true representation of what was intended in the first place, but with the added benefit of 30+ years of technological and design innovation. Video games as art and as museum pieces. 16. Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster – 1994, 2023, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Nobuo Uematsu. Time played: 43 hours Completed: platinum There was a time when I would have easily considered this game the GOAT. And its still great. I think in terms of impact on both gamers and game developers Final Fantasy VI should typically place much higher on most lists, ahead of many of the games to follow on this list. However, playing FFVI again in 2023 it becomes easier to see where this game is flawed. Perhaps the narrative and mechanics were stretched over too many characters and then squeezed too tightly to fit it all in a SNES cartridge. The release of the Pixel Remaster gives the game a fresh coat of paint and a way to install it on my PS5’s hard drive but this is a game I feel could really benefit from a full remake. Arguably Nobuo Uematsu’s best work. 15. Legend of Mana – 1999, 2021, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Yoko Shimomura. Time played: 22 hours (at time of writing) Completed: not yet The last RPG from Japan I will be playing this year and am currently still playing it at time of writing this list. Another game on the seemingly impossibly long list of late 90s RPGs that I owned yet never played very much of. The non-linearity of this game would have been what killed it for me back then, but is something today I find easy to appreciate. A game that presents its narrative vibes first and text second will always find a place in my heart. While it doesn’t replicate the grand adventure-journey of Secret of Mana, this is very much a Mana game. Clunky combat, colourful characters and locations and whimsy pouring out over everywhere. The remaster is a great way to play this game. 14. The Legend of Dragoon – 1999, Japan Studio. Composers: Denis Martin, Takeo Miratsu. Time played: 67 hours Completed: platinum The Final Fantasy VII we have at home. The most accurate description this game will ever have. Weird, quirky and full of questionable design decisions, the game continually tickled me throughout my playthrough of it with just how much of an oddball it is. The soundtrack, narrative, graphics, combat system all leave many things to be desired but combined into the whole that is The Legend of Dragoon you get something truly wonderful. Japan Studio have always been able to inject a little bit of indescribable magic into every title they’ve made and this game is no different. The main theme If You Still Believe playing over the ending credits had me simultaneously laughing and crying. 13. Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster – 1991, 2023, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Nobuo Uematsu. Time played: 25 hours Completed: platinum This is my OG. My ultimate nostalgia. I had to go over to friend’s houses to play SMB3, or Punch Out, or Paperboy, but the SNES was the first console we had at home. I was delighted and I wanted to play everything. My dad would take me to the local video rental shop (Called “A to Z Video” which he loved to call “A to B Video”, a joke on its poor selection of titles) and every week I’d pick a new game to play. I started at the beginning alphabetically: ActRaiser. The next week would select the next game along, whatever it was even if it was Bubsy. This stopped however when I got to “F”. After taking home Final Fantasy II, I never wanted to rent another game. Final Fantasy IV as we all know it as today was the first RPG from Japan I ever played and ignited my love for the genre. Here was a game with interesting characters, and an exciting story, and my god the music. I had never heard such an incredibly varied and vivid score to anything before so full of depth and emotion. I knew at that instant that this is what I wanted to play and that I needed to find more of it. Final Fantasy IV will always have a special place in my heart and playing through it again this year with the Pixel Remaster was pure joy. 12. Wild Arms 2 – 1999, Media.Vision, Contrail. Composer: Michiko Naruke Time played: 52 hours Completed: platinum I wrote about the first Wild Arms game last year where I placed it at number 9. Its sequel comes in just outside of the top 10 this year, though perhaps not due to being an inferior game. Yet another game I owned an original copy of but had little to say about until this year (this was clearly a difficult time for me and console RPGs. 2000 saw the release of Diablo 2 and then not long after I discovered EverQuest which kept me preoccupied for several years). Wild Arms 2 expands upon the successful formula of the first game but with a bit more of everything. The combat system is expanded with a full roster of 6 characters which injects much improved agency into the combat system. Wild Arms 2 does one of the things I appreciate the most in an RPG which is to have characters whose roles in battle are clearly defined, and switching out characters for others is encouraged as the situation demands. I’m one of those RPG players who likes to use every character at their disposal so I appreciate when a game makes this mechanically relevant. Contrast this to games like FFVII where the characters are just vehicles for their materia set ups and are largely interchangeable. All in all, Wild Arms 2 is an excellent sequel to an already excellent game and a perfect excuse to listen to more of Michiko Naruke’s amazing compositions. 11. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana – 2016, Nihon Falcom. Composers: Hayato Sonoda, Takahiro Unisuga, Yukihiro Jindo, Mitsuo Singa. Time played: 60 hours Completed: yes One of the year’s biggest surprises for me. The other of Falcom’s big franchises that I had previously no experience with, Ys VIII is proof that I’d been missing out. This game hits you with a broadside of bombastic synthy pop music and hardly ever lets up. Add in a breezy action combat system and luxurious environments and you’ve got yourself the perfect summer getaway adventure! This game really does lean into its premise of Anime Gilligan’s Island and as a result feels fresh and unique compared to typical RPG offerings. The cast of characters and mystery-adventure narrative are well thought out and presented but again, it’s the pacey combat and driving soundtrack that puts you in the mood for adventure and discovery and this game has tons of things just waiting to be explored. 10. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising – 2022, Rabbit & Bear Studios/Natsume Atari. Composer: Hiroyuki Iwatsuki ♫https://youtu.be/mwkyAESuCyQ?si=E_utk4aHbvxAC1x- ♫ Time played: 16 hours Completed: yes  I have been eagerly following the development of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes since I first came to hear of it but when this little title came out, I didn’t give it much thought. I’m not sure what I expected from it but it didn’t seem worth the £15 or whatever to find out. However, when the game went up on PS+ last month well, that’s a completely different value proposition entirely! Suikoden is one of my all-time favourite RPG series and its absence has been sorely missed. I have been cautiously optimistic about Eiyuden Chronicle filling that gap. It’s got all the right people working on it and the project appears to be well-backed and funded, but you know how these things can go. Playing Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising has not only allayed my fears but removed the caution from my optimism and turned it into full blown hype! Let’s get the nitty gritty out of the way, speaking strictly about the gameyness of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising admittedly there isn’t much there. Gameplay is action 2d platformer metroidvania style and combat flows pretty nicely if mechanically on the simple side. Most sidequests involve delving into one of the 4 dungeons to collect materials or defeat a specific monster. Graphically the HD-2D backgrounds are gorgeous but character animations are stiff. I’m not gonna beat around the bush here: this is essentially mobile game level. But, it’s a good mobile game and besides, the gameplay and graphics are not what puts it at number 10 on this list. What got me excited about Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising was the writing and the design and what it means for the main game when it releases next year. It’s all there, folks. Suikoden is back! Within Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is contained all the things that made the original Suikoden games great. The characters, the town building, rune(lenses??!?), weapon upgrading, unite (combo) attacks???? A bit cheeky to be honest. There’s more Suikoden in here than feels legal and proper for a legally-distinct Suikoden game. The character writing is on point. The story in Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a simple affair but the moment-to-moment character interactions are charming and genuinely funny. CJ, Garoo, and Isha are enjoyable folk to be around and I’m looking forward to spending much more time with them and other friends when Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes releases in April and if Rising is anything to go by, it’s gonna be a banger! 9. Persona 4 Golden – 2008, 2012, Atlus. Composer: Shoji Meguro ♫https://youtu.be/Q7enj9U_lGk?si=7cFouv16loZQZ0Ox ♫ Time played: 64 hours Completed: yes  Persona and SMT are a giant among RPG franchises however my exposure to them is minimal. My only previous experience with the series was playing through Persona 5 while on furlough from work for 6 weeks in February 2021. I enjoyed it, but not quite enough for it to make my top 10 list that year. Fast forward two years and suddenly Persona 4 Golden has a PS5 port and it’s the so-called Year of the RPG from Japan. Seems about right to me. I’ll start this one off by saying I enjoyed this game more than Persona 5. Everything from Persona 5 is already here in Persona 4 albeit a bit less so. The style had not quite ramped up to the levels hovering around 11 in P5, but its there. The structure of the gameplay is the same, although the dungeons feel a bit bare. The soundtrack though is definitely swinging, and for my money is the biggest draw of the entire Persona franchise as we now no it. This is a game that you can’t help enjoy playing cuz it’s just got that groove. That jam. That swagger. But what about it puts it above its bigger brother? For my money, it’s the characters. Persona is nothing without its characters and while I feel the side characters were somewhat less developed than their P5 counterparts, the main playable cast were far and away more interesting and intriguing than the Phantom Thieves. The main cast of P4G felt to me more grounded and actualised. They felt like normal teenagers struggling with normal teenage things. Perhaps the setting had a lot to do as well, as someone who grew up in a somewhat Nowhereville rural town myself, I felt I could relate. Even some of the more problematic characters like Yosuke I felt were well-realised. Obviously, you can debate the authorial intent behind Yosuke, but playing Persona 4 Golden in 2023 as a late 30 something and reflecting back on my own high school years, I can say I already knew Yosuke very well for better or for worse, the insecure, egotistical, homophobic person that he is. I’ve sure as hell met plenty of people exactly like that in real life, growing up and still to this day. But what really puts Persona 4 Golden on this list is its music. It’s a game you switch on so you can switch off, just like you would with a favourite album or playlist. 8. Final Fantasy XVI – 2023, Square Enix Creative Business Unit III. Composer: Masayoshi Soken ♫https://youtu.be/CeqyEzK87z4?si=mEQ-KcVn3td5qQ8x ♫ Time played: 90 hours Completed: yes  The release of a brand new mainline Final Fantasy title is a cause for celebration. Ever since I could afford to buy games for myself I always bought them on release day. Reception of these games is always mixed as the series continually changes and innovates sometimes successfully, sometime less so. Players’ perceptions of the series has varied greatly as well as more and more titles are released its more and more likely that this or that title might have been one’s first entry. And its quite a common saying that your first Final Fantasy will often be your favourite. At any rate, that change and innovation is as much a part of Final Fantasy’s identity as its moogles and chocobos and in my mind is very much worth celebrating. Final Fantasy XVI changes things up yet again, this time completely stripping away traditional RPG trappings leaving only a vestigial nub. The combat system designed by Capcom veteran Ryota Suzuki is fast, frenetic, and fluid, both visually stunning and responsive to control. The sheer spectacle of the set pieces is like none other. Playing Final Fantasy XVI, you immediately get the impression that the team knew exactly what kind of game they wanted to create and for the first time in a long time for a mainline single player Final Fantasy it looks like they managed it. Of course, the game is polarising to some fans. I myself have a few quibbles with it and a few design choices which I find questionable but overall, this was an excellent game and competently made. As another entry into the storied Final Fantasy pantheon becomes etched into our collective consciousness, I can’t help but think how firmly Final Fantasy XVI deserves its place in it. This is a game that represents a new era of Final Fantasy single player titles, born out of the hard work and lessons learned with Final Fantasies XIV and XV to turn the franchise around and give it much needed direction, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next. 7. Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line – 2023, indeszero. Composers: all ♫https://youtu.be/5ZCg-eR8xOs?si=MFzupvDvio6dFEtR ♫ Time played: 38 hours Completed: yes  Never played a Theatrhythm game before since I never had a 3DS, but I’ve always been Theatrhythm-curious so to speak. As I might have alluded to earlier in this post how the main driver in playing RPGs and the way that I most strongly connect emotionally with them has been through the music, as well as being a casual fan of casual rhythm games in the past, the concept of Theatrhythm almost feels tailor-made just for me. As it turns out its tailor-made for just about anyone. This is such a great game to just pick up and play and there are a ridiculous number of tracks and several different modes and difficulty levels that it would be nearly impossible to exhaust all the content available. Being so easy to play and boasting an excellent co-op mode meant that Theatrhythm Final Bar Line became the Fridge and Fridgelina game of choice. Previously only vaguely aware of the Final Fantasy franchise, we had Fridgelina humming the chocobo theme absent-mindedly to herself in a matter of hours. Furthmore, the game releasing a few months before the pixel remasters hit consoles meant I had her primed and ready to listen out for all her favourite tracks while I played through those. There is another more sombre reason for Theatrhythm Final Bar Line leaving a lasting impression on us this year as it gave us our beloved cat Penelope her final nickname. Fridgelina had long associated the moogles in the Final Fantasy franchise with the feline members of our family, particularly Penelope, and whenever you fail a quest in the game the moogle companion announces this with a “wubblewubblewubble” sound and so we took to calling Penelope “Wubbles” (along with her other nicknames Neen, Sneen, Nene, Panini, etc.). Sadly, Wubbles succumbed to her kidney disease in September of this year after putting up a brave fight for a long time. Rest in peace sweet moogle.  Penelope “Wubbles” Corn (2015-2023), pictured with her favourite scratching post, the Moogle Post. 6. Live A Live – 1994, 2022, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Yoko Shimomura ♫https://youtu.be/c5cv9nHlw1k?si=3G8GJE2g1XZkXOpS ♫ Time played: 30 hours Completed: yes  Its very easy to appreciate this game. It’s experimental style in both narrative structure and gameplay harkens back to era of game design that at times feels long behind us. We live in a time of yearly CoD releases, seemingly endless streams of rogue-likes, souls-likes, metroidvania-likes, the next open-world PvPvE extraction battle royale builder shooter… remasters and remakes…. Of course, being a remake itself is not lost on me, but considering that for many of us this is our first experience with this game, I think it can be excused for that (besides, I quite like remasters and remakes). Live A Live presents us with a variety of scenarios to play, transporting the player through time and space from prehistory to the distant future. Each scenario has an individual narrative and individual mechanics, which some scenarios hardly featuring any traditional battles at all, others without even any text in its narrative. The short vignettes deftly present their themes plainly, but do not go into much detail before closing the curtain, leaving us with much to ponder about before swiftly moving on to something entirely different. This is a game that is not afraid to leave the player wondering and wanting more, and for that I commend it. Too many facets of our media and entertainment are quick to lose faith in itself and its audience, too eager to explain its jokes and meanings. Live A Live presents itself simply and as-is, allowing our minds to breathe and make our own connections to the experience. Also featuring is a surprisingly robust tactical battle system. If I were to have one complaint about this game is that its battle system is under-utilised and only starts to come alive toward the very end of the game. I was often thinking to myself while playing that I would love to see a more traditional RPG with this battle system as I feel it leaves a lot of untapped potential on the table. Finally, what ties this entire package together like a great big golden bow is Yoko Shimomura’s fantastically sublime soundtrack. If Live A Live presents us with the option of travelling across time and space then Shimomura’s compositions are the vehicle that takes us there. 5. Star Ocean: The Second Story R – 1998, 2023, tri-Ace/Gemdrops. Composer: Matoi Sakuraba ♫https://youtu.be/0yGHTeckax4?si=3OMfaBW7fhSLBbgB ♫ Time played: 45 hours Completed: yes  This came completely out of nowhere. Was anyone aware this was even in development prior to being announced in the “oh by the way, this is out in 2 months here play this demo” manner in which it was? As a quick aside, I am absolutely loving this return of the demo to Square Enix’s marketing and publishing repertoire and honestly it just feels right with this retro-resurgence and proliferation of HD-2D titles we are currently seeing. Remember when you would buy a game just for the demo disc is came with (looking at you Brave Fencer Musashi..)? Also, where’s our Brave Fencer Musashi remake..?? It may sound like I’m going off on a tangent when I should be talking about the game Star Ocean: The Second Story R, but I’m not, honestly. I don’t actually have a whole lot to say about the game Star Ocean: The Second Story. It’s kind of a by the numbers RPG; expanding on the systems and narrative from the first game, it’s a perfectly cromulent title. I owned a copy for PS1 but don’t remember getting very far with it (where have I heard that before…?). It’s the R bit in the title that I want to talk about and it’s the difference between this game placing at 5 on my list and say Grandia wallowing down at 22. This game is an absolute joy to play. It looks fantastic, it sounds fantastic, it feels fantastic. The QoL improvements let you effortlessly glide through the game seeing all it has to offer without the typical friction you’d find in a PS1-era RPG. Someone upthread I think said of developers Gemdrops that they “understood the assignment perfectly” and I couldn’t agree more. Star Ocean: The Second Story R sets the bar for HD-2D remakes. Which makes me wonder why they went through the trouble of remaking this game in particular, as it’s always been a more niche cult hit and the rest of the Star Ocean franchise famously waffles in quality. But, I’m glad they did. I’m not of sales numbers but the quality of this title is plain to be. Gemdrops knocked it out the park and they showed that they clearly know what they’re doing. Perhaps this was a test run to spin up the studio and give them experience working on such a project, sort of like Bluepoint building their chops on the Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls remakes. I desperately want to know what Gemdrops are working on next. What games would you like to see given the Gemdrops treatment? Also, quick shout-out to Celine for inspiring Fridgelina to coin the phrase pixel bitch. 4. Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster – 1992, 2023, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Nobuo Uematsu ♫https://youtu.be/zJ5iAANU0fg?si=m2rs-nGRbdd8I8ez ♫ Time played: 38 hours Completed: platinum  This is it. It’s the best one. We all know that though, right? Final Fantasy V is a desert island game. Mechanically it is so robust that you can come back and play through it time and time again and it just never gets old. Hell, there’s an entire following of people who play it every year, for charity! I myself have partaken in the Fiesta many a time. And now that I’ve got a big fat glorious way to play Final Fantasy V on a big rear end telly, I will again. Having a definitive version of this game to play on modern consoles is something that had been sorely lacking for a long time. I say Final Fantasy V is the best one, but of course that is completely subjective and may or may not be true. We’ve all heard all the arguments about why any of the Final Fantasies are the best one. However, I’d like to posit that if not the best, then Final Fantasy V is the most important Final Fantasy game. I will certainly listen to arguments that no, the first game, or FF7 is the most important game, think of how it saved the company from bankruptcy, or the sales that catapulted the brand to the global phenomenon that we all know today. Sure, but those are reasons that are important to Square Enix the company, what I’m talking about it how Final Fantasy V is the most important Final Fantasy to the franchise aesthetically, spiritually. Final Fantasies are often grouped in eras, usually along console division lines, although another line of thought groups the first five games together before starting off with other eras beginning with VI. There is merit to this observation and it puts Final Fantasy V at a very crucial position in the timeline. The first five games are all very similar aesthetically and in design ethos, though the proceeding sequels all have their obvious differences, Final Fantasy V is a culmination of all of them. It is a perfection of everything that has come before it. A display of mastery over their systems. It has the alternate levelling of II with job points. It has the job system of III. It has the sweeping narrative focus of IV. Final Fantasy V is a literal marvel of game design and the fact that it remains so fresh and playable today is testament to that. After completing this magnum opus the game designers at Square knew they had to seek out even more fantastical ways to evolve the franchise and pushed them to explore and create the rest of the games we know and love today. Also, Final Fantasy V is the first appearance of moogles, and Gilgamesh, and blue mages and where the gently caress would Final Fantasy be without any of that, huh?? But none of that really matters, especially not to why I placed Final Fantasy V at number 4 on my list. Its just a really drat good game. 3. SaGa: Scarlet Grace - Ambitions – 2016, 2018, Square Enix/Studio Reel. Composer: Kenji Ito ♫https://youtu.be/yK_Smhk7Xx4?si=2kNnc64NINRYRv5B ♫ Time played: 55 hours Completed: yes  Here we are at the top three. I may have mentioned previously (and if not, I’m mentioning it now) that the most significant way I connect to a game is through it’s vibe, and that RPGs (especially those that come from Japan) can be particularly vibe heavy games, possibly more than any other type of game outside of the indie sphere. The three games at the top of my list all have supreme vibes, but interestingly enough communicate them in different ways. Of course, all three of these games use all facets of game design to great effect – art direction, narrative, music etc but each leans more heavily on one aspect than the other. I will now attempt to describe what the gently caress I’m talking about. SaGa: Scarlet Grace has a very striking visual design. At first, I found it a bit off-putting, especially the character design and I hesitated to pull the trigger on playing this title based on what I had seen in previews. But, having been a bit disappointed in Minstrel Song, and craving more SaGa in my life I decided to go for it in the end anyway. SaGa: Scarlet Grace is a significantly pared down title compared to a lot of other games, probably due to it originally being a Vita exclusive. Narrative sections are in the form of skits on static backgrounds with stiffly animated characters. The world map has a lovingly hand-drawn 2D watercolour aesthetic where points of interest – towns, dungeons, etc., pop up and out of the background as you approach them, like pieces placed in a board game or children’s story book. And that is exactly what sets the tone and vibe of the entire game. Playing SaGa: Scarlet Grace is like playing a board game, whimsical and irreverent, a bit of light-hearted fun. My playthrough of the game took me through Urpina’s story, and while the fate of the world did indeed hang upon the success of the protagonists, the main quest never imposed itself too heavily. More concerned we were with poking our noses under rocks and finding new events to trigger occurring almost random-like as if the result of a die roll or a card drawn off the top of a deck. The traditionally non-linear nature of the SaGa series lends itself perfectly to this sort of board game aesthetic – a perfect pairing that compliments both gaming traditions. However, no discussion of any SaGa game would be complete without mentioning it’s mechanics and battle system. Scarlet Grace retains the series’ famous stat growth and glimmering systems as well as introducing a delightfully tactical focus to its turn-based battles. Each turn in a battle of Scarlet Grace presents the player with a little puzzle to solve. Turn order and enemy attacks are all displayed in advance giving the player all the information they need to try and use their resources to the fullest. Turn order can be manipulated and setting up the right combinations or defeating certain enemies can result in powerful unite attacks. It is a deeply engaging and rewarding battle system that never becomes dull or rote. That battle system combined with Scarlet Grace’s striking and unique visual design make this game simply one of the best I’ve played in a long time. 2. Valkyrie Profile – 1999, tri-Ace. Composer: Matoi Sakuraba ♫https://youtu.be/cnDDTg_xqhs?si=H3TLLIdV8owzOQVT ♫ Time played: 40 hours Completed: yes  There isn’t anything quite like Valkyrie Profile, at least not that I’ve come across. It combines a rich narrative with a peculiar cross section of game mechanics that include a tactical battle system, 2d platforming, and menu futzing with character skill points and item crafting. Fans of the Star Ocean games will recognise tri-Ace’s predilection for a deep yet somewhat clumsily organised skill and crafting system making an appearance here. The battle system is fast paced and feels great in the hands with beautifully animated spritework, coming complete with battle barks that are a pure distillation of the 90’s VA scene, while the appreciation of which is entirely subjective it lends itself to the game perfectly. The 2d platforming is not the best, but something that adds a quintessentially “gamey” gamefeel. Sakuraba’s soundtrack here is the peak of this era of his career and the driving synths and beats would feel just at home pumping out into the arcades as it is into your living room. What I’m trying to say is that Valkyrie Profile is unapologetically a video game. It is not meant to be a subversive deconstruction of what a video game is or can be. It is just a video game meant to be played and enjoyed. And yet… It is absolutely oozing with vibes, and the way it chiefly communicates its vibe is through its narrative, though not through the text alone, but with its structure and presentation. Valkyrie Profile does not have a straightforward narrative. Yes, the plot is simple: you are Lenneth, a Valkyrie tasked with sending einherjar to Asgard to fight for the Æsir during Ragnarok. But that is not what Valkyrie Profile is about. For each einherjar you recruit to the cause you bear witness to the final moments of their mortal lives, emotionally charged scenes of regret, desire, longing, bitterness, and death. This sets the tone of the entire game. As Lenneth comes to witnesses these scenes time and time again her business-like detachment from the anguish of the recently deceased begins to falter and a meta-narrative begins to form. Valkyrie Profile is about searching for meaning in a world which has none. Rich with allusion and symbolism Valkyrie Profile is perhaps the most Literary video game I’ve ever played. It is a discussion of themes and concepts in a broad frame work that presents questions and challenges to the viewer. When trying to draw comparisons to Valkyrie Profile’s narrative what comes to mind are things like George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo – in other words, literature, not other video games. And yet again… This is a video game! Some players may not even come across some of the game’s most pivotal scenes, especially not on a first playthrough or without using a guide. The true and complete nature of Valkyrie Profile only reveals itself after spending a significant amount of time with it and steeping yourself in its systems and mechanics. This is a game that wants you to play it like a video game. It doesn’t care about making sure you witness all the content it has to offer, this isn’t a curated guided tour of set pieces and plot points. It’s not a video game attempting to use the medium to ape the experience of other art forms like some games’ attempts at emulating film or prestige TV. It’s not even attempting to emulate literature despite how literary it is, it just the closest approximation I have to describe what its doing. Valkyrie Profile is the most artfully constructed video game I have ever played. A true representation of video games as art that will forever rank as one of the greatest of all time. 1. Octopath Traveler II – 2023, Square Enix/Acquire. Composer: Yasunori Nishiki ♫https://youtu.be/cuVV-_-HKzM?si=EpcIX5NDZhCZk5bA ♫ Time played: 120 hours Completed: platinum  And here we are. Presenting the fridge corn Year of RPGs from Japan number 1 RPG from Japan: Octopath Traveler II. This is a game that has it all – a complete package. Everything this game had to offer was on point. The visuals, the gameplay, the narrative, the music (especially the music) was spot on. 10 out of 10s across the board. The thing that struck me the most while playing Octopath Traveler II (having never played the first one, mind) was how much it felt like playing a Final Fantasy game, and by that I mean the sheer level of care and quality that went into the game’s design. Final Fantasy 6 blew me away with its presentation in 1994. Octopath Traveler II did the same in 2023. Octopath Traveler II is obviously an homage to the 16-bit era games, which is what the whole design philosophy behind HD-2D is all about, of course. But it nails that homage so well that you could almost mistake it for the real thing. An alternate timeline where Square waited a bit before committing the series fully to 3D graphics. Final Fantasy 6.5 as it were. Can you imagine what it would have been like playing Final Fantasy 6 with excellently directed voicework? Play Octopath Traveler II and you’ll get at least an idea. I love the voicework in this game. I started off playing it in Japanese but I switched to English early on just for a quick listen but I never switched back. The VAs do a tremendous job bringing these characters to life. Can you imagine Partitio without his infectious twang? Agnea without her unabashed drawl? Temenos without the sassiness of his dry wit? How about Castti without hearing her soothing and practised bedside manner slip into something a little more comfortable (THESE HANDS  )? The combat barks are also second to none and quite intricate. Characters will compliment each other by name when someone lands a breaking blow. There are unique spell incantations for every character in every class. Such a little touch but adds so much to the characters and combat.Speaking of combat, Octopath Traveler II boasts one of the punchiest turn-based battle systems I’ve had the chance to play. On PS5, the game makes good use of the DualSense haptics to give a real tactile feel to what is essentially just scrolling through menus – a subtle but welcome addition. Turn order manipulation is a thing here, as well as the weakness-based break system, giving combat a tactical bent. With a plethora of skills, spells, classes, and weapon loadouts, there is a lot of playing around that can be done, although the class system is perhaps not as in-depth at FF5’s is. All in all the combat is a lot of fun, and with the freeform manner of the scenario selection the difficulty can be pretty much adjusted to taste. The massive boss sprites are pure delight. But what I really want to talk about and what really stood out to me almost immediately as I booted up the game; the thing that communicates the vibe of Octopath Traveler II most vibrantly: the soundtrack. Yasunori Nishiki’s chops are on full display here and his score for this game is a perfect showcase for why he just may be the biggest up and coming talent in the industry at the moment. Nishiki’s soundtrack borrows from a wide variety of styles and influences to give character to not only each of the main cast with their own leitmotifs but also each and every location that the party visit – bustling cities, snow-capped peaks, dusty backwaters are all bursting with aural character. Some of the influences are typical of video game sountracks – celtic, country, jazz, etc., others are a bit more on the nose such as Temenos’ continually modulating detective noir theme, or Osvald’s theme which I swear is more than just a wink and a nod to Ramin Djawadi. But while any distinctive style from Nishiki is hard to pin down, his mastery of composition, orchestration, and instrumentation is clearly and immediately evident. I mean who on this godforsaken earth couldn’t listen to this all goddamn day? I expect to hear a lot more great work from Yasunori Nishiki in the future. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if he ends up scoring a mainline Final Fantasy title one day. Easily the best soundtrack all year and by default that makes Octopath Traveler II the best game I played all year. Thanks for reading. Here’s an easy list for Veeg (and you scroll-wheelers): 10. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising 9. Persona 4 Golden 8. Final Fantasy XVI 7. Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line 6. Live A Live 5. Star Ocean: The Second Story R 4. Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster 3. SaGa: Scarlet Grace 2. Valkyrie Profile 1. Octopath Traveler II
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Dec 22, 2023 23:46
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that is a lot of RPGs from Japan and also rest in peace sweet Wubbles
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Dec 23, 2023 00:00
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Octopath 2 is the first game where I was driven to purchase and play it solely by listening to parts of the soundtrack on YouTube. It's wild how consistently amazing it is and there's so much.
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Dec 23, 2023 00:12
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I pretty much never listen to music on its own but I've found myself going through ot2's soundtrack a lot
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Dec 23, 2023 00:14
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This was the first bit of it I heard when it came up in my YouTube Music autoplay. I was just jamming along to Partitio's theme and didn't really even look at what was playing. Then Critical Clash 2 started and I about fell out of my chair and have had it basically on repeat ever since.
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Dec 23, 2023 00:26
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fridge corn posted:24. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster – 1987, 2023, Square/Square Enix. Composer: Nobuo Uematsu As this is a thread about being positive about video games, I'll try not to put to fine a point on this. If you have an unreasonable knowledge of the gameplay of any of these games I would strongly recommend against playing the pixel remaster versions, because of the bug fixes and improvements made to them.
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Dec 23, 2023 00:40
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I can't think of a generic boss bgm I like more
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Dec 23, 2023 00:41
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ToxicFrog posted:I bounced off Agent 47 and Silent Assassin pretty hard, but I really enjoyed Blood Money and this writeup has me thinking that next time I want some Hitman I should perhaps pick up this rather than replaying my favourite BM missions. Oh my God you have a HUGE amount of new mans to hit, and so, so, so much content you can do, you are in for a treat! Edit: IOI frequently will do a free mission for a week or so as a way for people to get a chance to see if the game works for them, definitely a good way to see if the new style of the game works for you.
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Dec 23, 2023 01:43
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Honorable Mentions: Had a blast with all of these, but they didn't quite make my top 10. Any other year, etc. etc. Evil Wizard Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Super Mario Bros. Wonder Patch Quest ------- Top 10 ------- 10. Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name Always good to get more time with Joryu, and a nice quick adventure that supplements the story in 7. As with previous entries, probably half my playtime was mahjongg. 9. Tiny Thor A solid 2D platformer with a difficulty curve that keeps the challenge at a nice pace throughout. The level design does a great job incorporating all the movement upgrades. Could've incorporated Norse mythology better instead of having Thor fight bees, but very satisfying to ricochet Mjolnir through everything. 8. Spider-Man 2 A bit uneven but still engaging story that continues this series's unique spin on familiar Spider-Man mythos. Maybe the best character development and side quests of all the games this year. And who can hate swinging and gliding through NYC? Bit of missed opportunity with Kraven's hunt to have more super-villain bosses, but not for a lack of absolutely spectacular setpieces. 7. Gravity Circuit The best successor to Mega Man that I've played, hands down. 6. Super Crazy Rhythm Castle I loved Super Crazy Rhythm Castle not just for being a great rhythm game but as for how much it was not a rhythm game. Each stage introduces a new way to distract you from hitting notes or make you go do something else for a bit, and it becomes almost a puzzle game in how to min/max time spent on hitting notes on beat to get 3 stars. The setting has all sorts of charm and the music is fantastic, it just needs an intermediate difficulty setting. 5. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Jedi: Survivor would've been even higher were it not for the performance issues on launch. But cliche as it sounds, this game made me feel like a Jedi. The movement and combat were fluid. The story and characters were just good Star Wars; you could tell they had fun designing the planets, NPCs, and setpieces in that universe. Merrin is the best character. 4. Wo-Long: Fallen Dynasty I went on a Team Ninja binge in late 2022, and I'm a sucker for parrying games so I was super excited for Dynasty Warriors by way of Nioh 2. It did not disappoint. 3. Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie A victory lap for the Erebonia/Crossbell arcs. Ten games deep into this series, it's hard not to love all the characters and their interactions. Great to spend more time with them and get closure on some dangling stories. I appreciated that the main story felt tighter than the latter Cold Steel games, even with the procedurally generated Reverie dungeon gimmick. 2. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon I think I had every PS2 Armored Core game, and this is a stellar return to the series. Playing around with builds to figure out one to tackle a mission or boss was so satisfying, and there were so many cool weapons to try out. At least on the first playthrough, because it's also great blowing through everything on NG+ and NG++. Thought this would be my GOTY until... 1. Lies of P I don't think there's a part of this game I didn't like. The Sekiroborne combat, the mix-and-match weapon system, the enemies and bosses, the aesthetic, the Westworld-esque uprising in the city of Krat, all of it was fantastically done. And I appreciated how non-opaque the story was. Definitely had to do 3 playthroughs and 100% everything, despite 2023's stacked backlog. And in ascending order: 1. Lies of P 2. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon 3. Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie 4. Wo-Long: Fallen Dynasty 5. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor 6. Super Crazy Rhythm Castle 7. Gravity Circuit 8. Spider-Man 2 9. Tiny Thor 10. Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
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Dec 23, 2023 02:27
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Honorable Mentions aka games that I played a lot this year but I've just continued to play for years on end so I can't count them in good conscience: Guilty Gear Strive - I went to Evo and Combo Breaker this year, and had a match shown on stream at Evo. I placed on the podium at a couple of local tournaments. But I haven't been able to win a match on Day 2 yet at a major. That's my goal for 2024. Season 3 is great so far with the addition of universal mechanics, and the recent December patch adjusted these mechanics for the better. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Now that the DLC is complete, it's a staggering amount of content, and it's still Mario Kart so it's still fun as hell. 200cc is some of the most fun I've ever had with a racing game. I can't ask for much more, and I'm not sure where they'd start on a sequel to this behemoth. My most anticipated for 2024 is Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth by a country mile. On to the list: 7. Metroid Prime Remastered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM2AtBJCCtA Look, it's loving Metroid Prime. It's one of the best games ever made, with a slick new coat of paint and new control schemes. But I can't place a remaster of a game I've already beaten multiple times that high up on my list. 6. Street Fighter 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml2vlEO4wLY I have no complaints about the overall gameplay systems and the amount of content in Street Fighter 6. It set a new standard for single player content in fighting games, and drew a lot of people in with World Tour mode. Mechanically, they really hit the sweet spot on a lot of different things, learning a lot of the lessons from where and how Street Fighter 5 failed at launch. Building on the hip-hop aesthetic that Third Strike had originally leaned into emphasizes that they've finally taken the step into the future of the series' chronology. But quite frankly, I don't vibe with the game at all on a competitive level, and I think I just personally don't like the gameplay Street Fighter offers. Without getting too far into the weeds, I love the neutral aspect of fighting games, and I'd like to think I'm at least decent at it in Guilty Gear, but Street Fighter relies far more on extremely tight precision in spacing and timing and arbitrary aspects of combos that are too frustrating and punishing to get wrong. So, it's a great game I would recommend to anyone as an introductory point to the fighting game genre, but it's not necessarily my cup of tea. 5. Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRNaeSB0SRE The game's been out for 8-10 days, yet I feel comfortable setting it here for now. I was a big fan of the original GBVS, and I've always thought the setting and character design were interesting enough to be tempted by the siren's song of the mobile game. GBVS died an untimely death due to COVID, a noble sacrifice so the genre could finally deliver good netcode to every game; for that, I am forever grateful. Rising immediately seems like a refined version of the original with new mechanics that are well thought-out and not kinda just stapled on in a patch like the original's were. Rising also fits the moniker of "anime Street Fighter" probably the best out of any game in the "anime" subgenre, even though some characters still have air movement shenanigans. Plus, they just announced 2B as a guest character, so they got that going for them. Super fun fighting game all around, and they have a f2p version of the game available with a weekly rotating list of characters to give it a go and see if you like it. 4. F-Zero 99 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgptrenl9fk When I saw the initial trailer for F-Zero 99, I was aghast and dismayed. How dare they cheap out on us and not make a new F-Zero?? Well, it turns out that I'm just stupid sometimes. The 99 concept is actually really good when applied to a game as frenetic as F-Zero. You can't play mindlessly, you have to think through your racing lines and energy to account for hazards at pretty much every turn, whether that's other racers or the bumpers that plague the tracks. Actually, the strategy with how energy and boosting are used in this game is very deft. Even though I love GX, boost strategy wasn't super essential to winning. For being a 1991 game, it also looks great on Switch. Sadly, the player base dwindled pretty significantly even before the addition of the King League tracks, and they're very slow in adding new modes, but I had a blast in the time I spent with it. I just hope this leads to a brand-new game in the future. 3. The Great Ace Attorney 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvzmYizWGiw I said I was splitting this one up last year because I finished the first part, and thankfully the second part delivered in a big, big way. The second case involved one of my least favorite characters in the whole series, and I was very tempted to drop the game entirely. But I powered through the case, and the remainder was banger after banger after banger. There are some absolutely wild twists and turns to the game, it started with the most obvious thing I thought they were going to drag out until they couldn't avoid it any more, but they got it out of the way before the case ended. And the reveals only got wilder from there. The way the final case unfolds and the way the final villain is undone is maybe the best coup de grace in the entire series. I'm very glad I invested the time into finishing this game, it was well worth the struggle with the first part. 2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeBG1g1BRMA Xenoblade 3 was my GOTY last year and very nearly made SA's top 3 overall, and Future Redeemed is a fantastic follow-up to the base game. Originally, I was hoping that it would be an epilogue. It's not. Like with F-Zero 99, I was disappointed when it was first announced. But again, what I got more than made up for it. It put such an excellent 20-hour capstone on the series mechanics and battles leading up to this point that I wish some things had been backported to the main game. The music is still in a class of its own when it comes to JRPGs, from the battle music you hear within 5 minutes of hitting New Game to the final boss theme. The characters (save one who starts strong but fades into the background) are spectacular, on par with the main cast in 3. The pacing is brisk and it barely feels like it wastes a moment, which is ultimately kind of a shame because I wouldn't have minded another 5-10 hours with them. It piles layers on events from the base game and the rest of the series, it doesn't waste your time rehashing what you already knew, and transforms those things into something different and new and seamless. It's at times funny, tragic, and bittersweet. It'll be a while before I stop tearing up at "I can see it, clear as day." And then, when it's all over, they have the audacity to get the singer of Xenogears's ending theme to sing the end credits song. They knew exactly what they were doing, and it hits so well. It's a beautiful ending to the trilogy. Where Monolith Soft goes from here is anyone's guess. But whatever they cook up next, it'll have my full attention. 1. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbAb693FPJk In my opinion, Breath of the Wild was one of the best games ever made; Tears of the Kingdom makes Breath of the Wild obsolete. I cannot think of anything off the top of my head Breath does that Tears doesn't do better. I didn't hate the music in Breath, but what's present in Tears feels fuller, a clear show of the passage of time with both Link and Zelda. The power sets in Tears...I mean, Ultrahand. Ultrahand, and by extension Autobuild, is black magic on a level I will probably never comprehend. Developers are probably going to be tearing their hair out for years to follow what Tears does with its building and physics engine. The world evokes such a beautiful sense of change and looking ahead, while the loneliness of missing the most essential thing lingers. While people critique the Depths for being copy and pasted terrain or the sky islands for being more sparse than expected, learning all the ins and outs of how they operate led to some really cool discoveries along the way. And the Depths gave me one hell of a jumpscare - "Huh, that looks like an eye. Wait is it getting clo - oh NO!" The shrines removed a lot of the chaff from Breath of the Wild and streamlined a lot of them into some excellent puzzles, so much so that I wish some of them had more steps or just that there were more shrines in general. The dungeons are clearly better, not even a question. Combat is much more friendly once you get the hang of fusion, while still being tense and punishing for mistakes. Overall, there's just more to do by an order of magnitude in Tears. Of course, Tears of the Kingdom is imperfect in that classically Nintendo way. Vagaries in the world and missing pieces portray Tears Link in a strange way, as if he speedran the All Divine Beasts category in Breath of the Wild, which creates an unusual tension between the player and the world. The game desperately wants to avoid spoiling Breath of the Wild but raises a dozen questions in its wake. What Tears emphasizes, especially through the lens of other games placing highly on lists here, is Nintendo's main studios treat narrative as an afterthought, especially in the midgame. It's especially glaring in Tears because people wanted to follow this Link and Zelda, to see them and how the world had changed around them. There are also wrinkles with storyline quests that impacted the midgame and what they reveal. The way I experienced it made everything fit together nicely; others weren't so lucky, and generally I've seen it impacted their experience with Tears for the worse. Overall, parts of the script clearly needed another round of edits. But the bookends are so incredible that I can forgive the midgame narrative's shortcomings. The beginning is perfect, the buildup to the final boss is perfect (good god, the music), the boss fight itself is tense as hell and has great nods to other Zelda games, and the final gameplay sequence is beyond perfect. I was so caught up in the moment that only in watching other people experience the ending did the weight of everything Link and Zelda do over the duology hit. Tears sticks the landing in a way very, very few open-world games do, and that earns it my #1 spot.
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Dec 23, 2023 08:44
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My post from last year. Quick list for points tallying is at the bottom of this post. Oh boy, here we go. Truly this was the year of the Squenix for me, although really I wish I'd beaten more games. I feel like I have but I just don't remember them, which is a commentary on them in itself, I guess. I HAVEN'T FINISHED THESE YET Hi-Fi Rush: The combat is pretty good! The platforming sure is platforming! Nice to have this pop out of nowhere on Game Pass. Alan Wake 2: I'm playing this as a couple-backseat game and it's slow going. It's pretty good though! Unfortunately I think the actual action shootery bits are holding back what could've been a more chill walking adventurey game with maybe some more basic combat or action scenes. Like, even QTEs would be fine. Astlibra Revision: What an odd game. Like a chapter-based Metroidvania, but more about farming materials to make the weapons that teach you skills, as well as regular key-finding. Also has a lot of story. Also is horny and likes boobs. Baldur's Gate 3: Actually I haven't even played this yet, but it looks real good and I'll grab it next year after I upgrade my computer. Strange Horticulture: I started it. It's pleasant. Weirdly stressful but I think I'm imagining time pressure where it doesn't exist. Song of Farca: A cool game about doing hacking of physical stuff to do detective things. Then I realised that chapters had different endings based on what you do in them, and there's no manual saving, and ohhhh nooo my tummy hurt Triangle Strategy: I like how this game gives you a bunch of different, unique units to use instead of generic classes. Unfortunately I really suck at this game? It's hard! You really need to work your tactics! Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe: The End is never The End. Honorable Mentions Horizon Forbidden West (plus The Burning Shores)  The Horizon games really give it their all in terms of enemy design and pretty environments, the game can't be faulted on those. Unfortunately the story here is half a retread of the first game (as Aloy even comments to Sylens) and half a tale told better elsewhere. I'm also bad at finding the synergies the game really wants me to in terms of fighting 'optimally' so many fights are more slogs than they should be. Also you need way too many materials to max out some weapons, come on. RIP Lance Reddick. Lethal Company https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-xZslsl9M8 I don't think I have the drive to survive my buddies (shoutout to Cassa, ProfBadger and BaronOhShi) do. But it's funny goofy times. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles https://i.imgur.com/Q3fLxnr.mp4 For those playing this in the original two part form, this must have been excruciating. But in its combined form it's a pretty fun time, other than the clear budget cuts to the second game! Unfortunately, it suffers from the Ace Attorney curse of waffling on for far, far too long in its dialogue. Funny localised writing? Yes. Snappy writing? No. But it's hard not to be charmed by the Deduction/Course-Correction scenes. Venba  Pros: I could smell this game Cons: This game tried to guilt me harder into calling my mother than anything else I've experienced Now for my top 11! I waffled REALLY hard on what to include and couldn't settle on only 10 being involved. 11. The Case of the Golden Idol  I suck at Obra Dinn, which means I didn't like it. Golden Idol, on the other hand, was much more enjoyable to me by presenting each chapter in bite-sized pieces to enjoy and puzzle out. The story is fun, each new scene brings something new to your understanding of the finale (other than the rather pointless epilogue). It's a fun alt-historical mystical romp and I might check out the DLC someday. 10. Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo   It's important to get out of the way - Paranormasight's great prologue gives the impression that the game will be far more meta and fourth-wall-breaking than it actually ends up to mostly be. It's a really good horror VN though! It's very clearly channeling the vibe of the 80s movies that its setting is contemporary with, and being created by a team in Square-Enix means it has a nice level of polish. The characters are mostly likable, and the story twists and turns. If you have the spare cash and you like horror adventure/VNs pick it up! 9. Final Fantasy XVI  Non-MMO mainline Final Fantasy is back, baby! Or is it? I was super duper hype for FF16. I took a day off to play it on release. The demo was fantastic, showing both the start of the story as well as an early game dungeon with some extra powers to play around with. CBU3 could do no wrong! Alas. Final Fantasy XVI is fun to play in combat. The action combat is graspable for those new to it but has enough tricks to hold the interest of DMC fans for at least long enough to roll credits. The major characters are all generally written well and brilliantly voice acted. The hunts are surprisingly fun. The eikon fights are naturally a great, fun spectacle. I appreciate the central message of "the fight against climate change is gonna get worse before it gets better". Yet being built by a team used to MMOs means this game suffers the exact same problem FF14 does - the big open-world zones are pointless and superfluous. They have almost no loot in them , they don't look particularly interesting and they exist basically to just be big for the size of bigness. When FF7R demonstrated so well how bespoke, more linear zones work, this feels like a step back. With a lower budget (seemingly) than first party titles like Horizon, the dull sidequests and surrounding dialogue were also awkward. I won't go so far as some clickbaiters in calling the game sexist, but its treatment of Benedikta was pretty unpleasant, and the writers seemed to forget that Jill was present in half the scenes she was in, as well as using her as a damsel-in-distress to be rescued not once but twice. Also, given how creative FF has been in the past, a generic European setting is dull as gently caress. I like FF16. Unfortunately, it left me disappointed, too. 8. God of War: Ragnarok  Let's start with the negatives: 1. The bits playing Atreus doing chores with Angrboda go too long. 2. For a game called Ragnarok, that was a pretty dull final 'big battle' war scene, especially given the buildup. Otherwise, hey, that was pretty good! The writer/director isn't the same as the first game so some parts are a little disjointed. But this was just plain a fun game to play through. I never started a play session thinking that the next part would be a chore. A great game to go through and 100%. A positive message, too, and a good way to end the series: you are only defined by past mistakes if you let your story end there instead of choosing to be better. Whatever Sony Santa Monica makes next, I hope they're allowed to take some risks and make something new and cool. 7. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin   BWUUUH? OK, full disclosure: I didn't play all the postgame and DLC, just youtubed it. But I cleared the main game and some of the postgame battles. And what a weird ride it was. The game initially seems like a Soulslike, but other than the control scheme the gameplay itself ends up feeling quite different. Levelling up and trying different jobs feels cool! Using big abilities in battle feels cool! Making a unique build is cool! The story goes to some interesting places and while you never get to know your companions too well, they're charming in their own ways. The game was just plain fun to play. Where I set my expectations of FF16 too high and got disappointed, I set my expectations for SOP low and instead had a good time. I would love to see this battle system and job system come back for a mainline FF game. I'm here to kill Chaos, and that's all I know. 6. COCOON   In a year stacked with big games, Cocoon was a cute little breath of fresh air. A puzzle game about carrying orbs (only one at a time!) but where each orb has a different power... and each orb also contains a world, and so you can store orbs inside other orbs if you can get yourself out of that world! The key to Cocoon as a puzzle game is that it keeps you moving along. It's actually a very easy game, which also makes it very easy to recommend. Great vibes. 5. LIVE A LIVE   Live a Live was first released in 1994, but this 2022 remake, ported to PC in 2023, shows it has plenty of tricks that other games still haven't picked up on. You play as a variety of protagonists in (almost) any order, and each time period has its own gimmick - the Far Future is mostly an adventure game with horror elements, the Wild West is time management with almost all the fights at the end, and Edo Japan is a stealth game as well as a proto-Undertale that tracks how many enemies you've killed. The soundtrack is full of bangers, and even the basic battle system is something it would be nice to see in more modern games with its blend of simple grid movement and special abilities that hit many ranges. The only things that bring LAL down the tiniest amount are the gender balance of its main protagonists (almost totally male other than the option for ancient China) and the way certain chapters can be overlong or grindy. 4. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana   Who would have guessed? One of the best JRPGs in recent years is a PS5 update of a PS4 port of PSVita game where the localisation was so bad they had to completely redo it. Firstly, Ys 8 has great music. More games should incorporate electric guitars into fantasy. To hell with orchestral. Anyway, Ys 8 requires no knowledge of prior games (I sure didn't have any) and callbacks are minimal. You are Adol, chronically addicted to adventuring. You and your buddy Dogi, as well as everyone else on your ship, are shipwrecked on a mysterious island. Your objective? Find everyone else, and then find a way off the island. This simple premise (that gets stranger as the plot progresses) makes for a very refreshing game. You're incentivised to explore every corner of the island. There's no currency, only items to find and trade at the village's trading post. Most of the castaways you find will unlock some new capability at Castaway Village, and they'll each 'contribute' to the occasional defense you have to engage in. The characters are lovable despite the rocky start with Laxia's introduction, and the gameplay is fun action-RPG fare that doesn't usually overstay its welcome or feel HP-spongey. It's a game where you move fast and cut through your foes at speed. The plot escalates but never feels like it's totally getting too out of hand, despite just how far the ending goes. I can't recommend it enough. Ys 8 reminds you why you started liking JRPGs. 3. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon   I've never really played an Armored Core game before, besides a tiny part of For Answer. But I like FromSoft's other games, and I'm also a big fan of TTRPG Lancer, which was heavily inspired by Armored Core and a dash of Titanfall, so I went for it. And it's great! Armored Core 6 is a drat cool game! There's not much more to say about it that hasn't already been said. Spend an hour painting and design your robot just right. Then go play through a mission in under ten minutes. Hopefully your build is flexible enough that you won't need to spend an hour tuning for the next mission too. The controls are solid and easy to get into, and once you get the hang of it, the game is wonderfully smooth to play, as well as very well-optimised - I played on PS5, but often via Remote Play to my PC. The plot, too, is no slouch - while you never (outside of some scuffed sketches) see a human face, the voicework does its job of painting a world where you're thrust into a war you barely know the details of, and you're forced to piece together why you're fighting and what it is your handler really wants. There's some repetitiveness as you unlock all the endings, but thankfully not too much - if you've beaten a mission before and it doesn't have a variation, well, by this point you should be able to breeze through it. I would love love love to have some kind of mission pack DLC. 2. Octopath Traveler 2 https://i.imgur.com/05Xa5WJ.mp4  I am pretty surprised to be putting this here! I picked up Octopath 1 in its release year, but found it to be initially charming, but then dull and not really grabbing my attention. The throwback JRPG vibes were a bit too throwbacky to really interest me in the characters, world, or plot - everything was very "extruded JRPG product". I didn't even get to recruiting everyone. Thankfully Octopath 2 improves on all that. More interesting characters, more interesting plots, and a bit more of the characters interacting with each other. In fact, now they have voice lines commenting on each other in battle - something that makes all the difference in making them feel like a more cohesive party. The battle system is decent, but it's the amazing pixel graphics, especially for the bosses, and the brilliant music that really steal the show. As a nice bonus, yet again the game isn't a chore to 100% - even the optional superboss has a strategy with which you can win without needing to grind too hard. The little plots of NPCs in each town are also really nice - it's rare to have a game where you're so excited to see what the next town has in store (so that you can rob it blind). I think the combat system of FF7Remake is the best there is, but OT2 is a game that reminds you that pixels and turn-based still have their place. 1. Slay the Princess   You can grab a free demo here! Yes, that's right, my GOTY2023 is a VN made by a small team. Scarlet Hollow, also by Black Tabby games, was on my list last year. StP was meant to be a shorter game to gather some interest and inject some funds to help finish Scarlett Hollow, which in itself is a very reactive RPG-like VN with skills that affect the narrative. They wildly succeeded to the point that I think that StP is a fantastic companion piece to Disco Elysium, of all things. You're on a path in the woods. A narrator is telling you that you need to go kill a princess, because if you don't, the world will end. You don't know anything else at the start of the game. But as you meet the princess, again and again, her form changes. And you change too - what was once just one voice you thought would be your inner monologue instead starts getting additional personalities. Nichole Goodnight does a great voice acting job as the Princess, equalling Jonathan Sims (most recognisable to fans of The Magnus Archive) as the Narrator and the aspects of the Hero. The whole game other than your choices is fully voice acted. There's a whole lot of choices to make in StP, and you get to explore a lot of them in its not-quite-timeloop narrative. Unlike games such as last year's I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, the game doesn't meta-remember your save files, so you're free to save and explore a different branch once you're done with your first playthrough - just make sure you roll credits on one continuous playthrough before you start exploring too far and ruining the experience for yourself. Slay the Princess stays with me both for its little moments, as well as the questions it asks. It takes 6 hours or so for one playthrough, but to see absolutely everything would probably double that, maybe a little less if you've made saves in all the right places to explore every little thing. It asks you - how do you feel about being told what to do? About other people? About death? About change? About breakups? and... are women bourgeoisie? Go play it, you won't be disappointed. --- Short list below: 11. The Case of the Golden Idol 10. Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo 9. Final Fantasy XVI 8. God of War Ragnarok 7. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin 6. Cocoon 5. LIVE A LIVE 4. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana 3. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon 2. Octopath Traveler 2 1. Slay the Princess bewilderment fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Dec 23, 2023 |
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Dec 23, 2023 09:17
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Worth noting there is free DLC coming for slay the princess in 2024 called The Pristine Cut that will add a bunch of things including multiple new routes. Which I am excited for, based on the possible routes already in the game. Plus that also means lots more excellent voice acting by Johnny Sims and Nichole Goodnight.quote:It asks you - how do you feel about being told what to do? About other people? About death? About change? About breakups?
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Dec 23, 2023 09:40
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bewilderment posted:Weirdly stressful but I think I'm imagining time pressure where it doesn't exist. That's odd, I don't remember typing this...
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Dec 23, 2023 10:07
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My top 5 of the year: 5. Greedfall First Spiders game I ever played and beat. I really enjoyed the story and character work in this. Think Bioware-lite; the old Bioware, not the Anthem Bioware. I found the hook of the main character you play to be unique-- you're a diplomat, not a hero, and you're tasked with dealing with the politics between all these different factions in a new world that you've set out to explore. There are native factions who don't get along with each other, let alone the colonists, or pirates, or mercenaries. Everyone's out for themselves and it's your job to try to get them all on your side, and sometimes that doesn't involve slicing up people with your sword! And which companion you take with you actually feels like it has an effect on how these stories unfold, which I appreciated. Of course it's got eurojank but I am very curious to see what happens with the sequel. 4. Norco Every time I drive by the local refinery, I can't help but turn my head to look at the flames burning atop the gas pillars. That's thanks to Norco, a game that does this very unique take on near-future sci-fi. Set in a futuristic Louisiana outside of a refinery town, the art style is something that draws you in immediately. It's pixel art of sci-fi stuff, but literally not like anything I've ever seen before. This isn't spaceships and lasers, it's closer to Blade Runner but grimier. Grittier. More rooted in the culture where its set. This is an atmospheric adventure game that, though I don't quite know if I knew what the meaning of the ending was, the ride was worth it. 3. Lies of P It was really hard to choose between this and AC6 for 2nd and 3rd place but as a true Fromsoft fan, I have to say that I rank this slightly below AC6, but know it wasn't an easy decision! The combat feels pretty much exactly like something straight out of soulsbornekiro, in a very refreshing way that most other soulslikes don't even come close to approaching (other than Surge 2). You could argue it's a straight ripoff but I'd call it more a love letter and greatest hits of everything Fromsoft have done. The lore and story are interesting, the world is interesting, the combat is amazing. Really, I was skeptical given the demo thinking "Ah they really did just want to make their own Bloodborne" but this is its own thing, with clear inspirations but carving its own unique little path. I cannot wait to see the DLC and what comes next. 2. Armored Core 6 Now why did I put this at #2 when I found the combat loop less enjoyable than the bread and butter soulslikes by a hair? It's the worldbuilding. All the pilots having their own clear personality without you ever even seeing their faces. The ambiance. The desolation. That's it, plain and simple. It's obviously very different than the classic exploration-based games Fromsoft makes, but the combat still rocks and gets the heart going. But really to me, what seals it is the characters. Such an odd thing to say about a mecha game where you don't see a single living human being, but... I mean come on, how can you not fall in love with Rusty??? 1. Hunt Showdown I bought this game because I wanted to sink my teeth into another multiplayer FPS and little did I know how deep the fangs would sink into me. My first extraction shooter and boy did it leave an impression. What a unique atmosphere, with a very pervasive Gothic Southern atmosphere. I love that the guns are all old timey with most only able to fire off one round before you need to reload. And there's no aiming reticle or crosshair, it's just you and the ironsights. The gunplay is intense, the fighting fun and hectic, and there's always a potential for danger. It takes all my favorite parts of PUBG (the shooting) and greatly diminishes the parts I didn't like (wandering around for hours only to get headshot out of nowhere from 1000m away). Really love the ~vibes~ especially the main menu music, which just sets the mood perfectly. I've spent hundreds of hours on this game and bought it less than a year ago! My new main multiplayer game and one that I never expected to hook me so hard. Yeehaw simulator!!!!
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Dec 23, 2023 11:15
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bewilderment posted:Strange Horticulture: I started it. It's pleasant. Weirdly stressful but I think I'm imagining time pressure where it doesn't exist. Strange Horticulture is extremely chill. You can while away the time leafing through a plant book while quietly cursing the idiot naturalist that wrote about the uses of a flower but not the drat color of it. One of the best little games in recent years
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Dec 23, 2023 11:18
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Outside of my post I am gonna say that the finale of Live A Live's prehistoric chapter is a failure of localisation and I'm sure it could have been handled better somehow. It's otherwise a good chapter and good intro to the game! The prehistoric chapter is totally wordless as it is meant to predate language. Characters communicate to each other with gestures and images that are meant to indicate particular images. At the very end, your hero, Pogo, says "Ai!" Love! It means "Love" in Japanese. Pogo says the world's first word, and it is Love. But this is sadly untranslated as just "Aieeee" and removes that extra meaning.
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Dec 23, 2023 12:59
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Yes, more points for Armored Core 6! I hope it'd got a good chance of ending up in top five, maybe even top 3 (we know bg3 and totk are going to be in top three for sure)
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Dec 23, 2023 13:34
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fridge corn posted:10. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising – 2022, Rabbit & Bear Studios/Natsume Atari. Composer: Hiroyuki Iwatsuki ♫https://youtu.be/mwkyAESuCyQ?si=E_utk4aHbvxAC1x- ♫ Suikoden itself is a game I liked more in concept than execution; the party collection, base building, and army warfare parts were great, and I really appreciated that the obligatory Epic Wizard Battle for the Fate of the Universe happens entirely off-screen and is really only relevant to like two side characters, while the other 99% of the game is concerned with the corruption, revolution, and war that actually matters to the people you meet. The dungeon crawling parts were a miserable slog, though; I didn't actually get through the game until I played it on the PSP with fast-forward and a "toggle random encounters" hotkey. Also, Gremio sucks on toast and I'm glad he's dead. I've heard that Suikoden 2 is overall an improvement on the original, but have never gotten around to playing it. I am pretty pumped for the idea of a team addressing the same concept with the benefit of an additional 30 years of JRPG design to learn from.
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Dec 23, 2023 17:44
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ToxicFrog posted:Someone just gifted this to me yesterday, and I'm only like an hour into it so far but I'm having a blast. I didn't back Hundred Heroes but I've definitely been keeping an eye on it. Yeah Suikoden was always a high concept series with a rather perfunctory execution especially the first one, but starting with the second game and again with the third, being real sequels despite not being directly related they still reference the events of the previous games in meaningful ways and build upon and expand the persistent world they all take place in. After the third one though Murayama left and the series took a bad turn and neither 4 nor 5 really managed to capture what made the first three games so good. I didn't back Hundred Heroes either but I have preordered it based on what I saw in Rising
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Dec 23, 2023 18:37
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 i thought about star wars guys saying stuff in 2023. and i played a bunch of games too. in the interest of efficiency im combining the rankkings into one list cheers 10) "this is where the fun begins" - anakin skywalker, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith don't agree with some of the stuff he does later in the movie but when the man's right he's right.  the moment they crest the capital ships and the cacophony of battle is laid bare. this is where STAR WARS (and the fun) begin. it's also what you say in anno 1800 when you unlock the ability to do colonialism. the quotes aren't meant to be relevant to the games by the way this was just a coincidencehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLkZc0oKf28  9) "no no no" - palpatine, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is anyone having more fun in star wars than palpatine?? well let's ask the man himself i feel hitman 3 is the weakest of the trilogy but it's got at least two solid maps. i don't have any screencaps or if i do i lost access to them so here's a hitman news thinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7neGRLjA3I  8) "what would the boy ride?? he smashup my pod in the last race" - watto, Episode I: The Phantom Menace a contentious quote, mostly because i don't know if i'm allowed to do the watto voice. #8 game on my list is pokemon infinite, a game where you combine pokemon together and play through pokemon fire red https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV5oTHdulwk  7) "time to abandon ship" - general grievous, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith the way grevious is always skulking and hunched and cackling and abandoning ship and his big Count dracula cape is good. not sure if i'm allowed to do his accent either but it's good too. last year i think put the terra nil demo on my list. well this year the full game came out and it's back. on the list https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zh1tqY7nNg  6) "anakin kneels before monster mash and pledges his loyalty to the graveyard smash" - mike slolsalka, Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du0buC_H0CQ  this one isn't technically a quote from star wars but it's my list and i'm putting it on here. i'm also putting pikmin 4 at #6 5) "red 11, standing by. red 5, standing by etc" - red squadron, Episode IV: A New Hope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEeTWVru1qc  a small but humanizing scene. a bunch of farm boys putting away their space farm tools. heading off knowing they may never fly down beggar's canyon again ........ i finally played ghost trick and it was pretty good. i think i would like a version with harder puzzles but people don't recommend the game for the puzzles, they do it for the visual novel element. which was good 4) "two fighters against a star destroyer??" - rebel pilot, Episode V: Empire Strikes Back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcbbnHHDpTg  the way the guy delivers this line is so bad. like he won a contest and they were legally obligated to use this take for some reason. anyway i was introduced to omega boost through izgc and it's become one of my favorite games. what if you were the cocky little freaks shogun from star fox 64 3) "mine!! or i will help you not" - yoda, Episode V: Empire Strikes Back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYaM90YQmqI  goblin mode yoda would rank #1 on my tier list of yodas. but that's for next year maybe. we love katamari reroll would rank #3 on my goty 2023 list, this year. better than the firs tgame in everything except music. i'm allowed to do yoda's voice for the record 2) "will you defer your motion to allow a commission to explore the validity of your accusations" - supreme chancellor valorum, Episode I: The Phantom Menace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-w1SbkpzV8  all time star wars quote. i played my first yakzua game, yakuza rpg, aka yakuza 7 i think, which is also called yakuza: like a dragon. and it comes in at #2 1) "actually, r2 has been known to make mistakes...... from time to time" - c3po, Episode V: Empire Strikes Back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMbLjt1UErY  the guilt in c3po's voice...... meanwhile i played souldiers, which is like a zelda metroid thing. the story absolutely blows but the exploration and movement and style is a+ honorable mentions i also played elder ring botw 2 timberborne magikarp jump sport story 7 days of die games i want to play next year silksong shadow gambit metroid prime remake persona 5 strikers frog detective 3 lies of p octopath 2 and may the force be with you !!
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Dec 23, 2023 19:08
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oddium posted:
dogshit list. gently caress you. elden ring pwns you.
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Dec 23, 2023 19:12
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Lurk these days but I do like these lists and thought I would throw my votes into the ballot box. It’s really nice seeing peoples’ lists and this acts as a much better way of finding games than any number of recommended listicle articles*. I don’t think my list is going to do that since it’s all basic mainline releases but I wanted to talk about my experiences about one game in particular. *For all its faults, one of the reasons I keep logged into SA even I don’t post anymore is it’s still so much more useful as a single place to find out what the gently caress is actually going on compared to most of the rest of the internet, looking at you AI generated guides. Honourable Mentions Lies of P Been playing this recently and while it’s good, it hasn’t fully grabbed me yet. Reason I didn’t want to rank it is that I feel like I am on the verge of getting it and I didn’t want to position it before I have finished the game. I have a vague feeling that my problems with it aren’t going to be remedied but for all that I did play it all last weekend so it has to be doing something right. My issues are that the enemy variety feels limited at the moment, a number of the mechanics feel half baked (cube and gold tree come to mind) and it lacks the exploration I was expecting. My main problem though is that the dodging feels unsatisfying, it feels like the i-frames aren’t quite synced with the animation of Pinnochio flopping to one side. I keep comparing it to Bloodborne which in my memory at least felt a lot snappier. With all that said, the aesthetic and base gameplay are top notch which is carrying me through, plus beating bosses is still satisfying. If you’re in the mood for some soulsborne-like action take this as a recommendation, should tide us over till Bloodborne 2 (cope). Tunic Lost a day to this while sick last week. Combat is extremely punishing and it’s made worse by demanding precision while the camera zooms out against big bosses. It’s far too easy to get stun locked. Getting lost is annoying. You also play a cute fox, the graphics are like having your eyeballs massaged and it just has this sense of wonder that is rare. Yes it wears its Zelda influences obviously but if you’re going to steal, steal big. Thumbs up, definitely going to play more Christmas day after I am done hosting and my brain is filled with turkey. Unboxing Played this while extremely hungover. If you are feeling like you can basically keep your internal organs running and little else, give this a go. Actual List #12 – Yakuza: Like a Dragon Technically I played a bit of this this year to finish it off. If you like Yakuza then this is more Yakuza, if you are new to the Yakuza series then I would start somewhere else. Felt the side-stories were somewhat lacking however the job they did on introducing a new cast of characters (for the most part) is top drawer. Plot’s as meandering as ever but that’s what we’re here for. #11 – Project Warlock After a very boomer shooter heavy 2022, this one was the only boomer-adjacent game I played this year for any length. I kept trying Ultrakill but that felt like the game was out to show me how slow and stupid I was. Doom Eternal came close, and the DLC was even more, but Ultrakill was exhausting. Anyway, Project Warlock is more of a Wolfenstein 3D derived game in which you kill your way around square levels against a colourful cast of enemies using a colourful cast of weapons. Much like Wolfstein 3D there’s a bit too much of the same thing however it fills an extremely important niche for games: the game you can drop in for 10 minutes while waiting for something else. No long tutorial, no massive loading screens, no faffing about. Just start up and get involved. #10 – Soma Usually I would dislike this sort of thing; walking simulator, limited gameplay, feels more like an interactive book with weirdly complicated page turning than an actual game. And yet the more time I spent with Soma the more I appreciated it. Yes, you’re basically walking from room to room and occasionally hiding. Yes, what gameplay there is is essentially the weak part of the game and I would actually recommend playing it on story mode. It is however one of the most immersive video games I have ever experienced, and the atmosphere alone puts it into this list. It achieves a level of “feeling” that is difficult to achieve, I wanted to see where it went next purely off that. #9 – Resident Evil 4 Remake Confession: I never played the original Resident Evil 4. I knew of it as a cornerstone of games history, and I had a copy of it in my games library but I never actually played it. I therefore couldn’t compare how good the remake was against the original. Overall I thought it was good, excellent even, but on replays I did notice a number of points where I thought “oh it’s that bit”. Oh it’s Del Lago, oh it’s the catapults, oh it’s the hordes of enemies on the island. So why put it on here? Well when it’s good, it’s really really good. Popping enemies in the head, flashing plagas, shooting axes out the air, popping jewels into ornaments, what yer buying stranger?, oooh I’ll buy it at a high price, upgrade, combine and you’re onto your next adventure. Plus the noises the regenerators make are extra spooky. #8 – Dark Souls 2 Darks Souls 2 was my first Dark Souls and remains my favourite Dark Souls. I don’t care why it’s bad, for me it’s like putting on a comforting old jumper. Every time I hear that Majula music it is like slipping into a bath at exactly the right temperature. I play it once a year and #8 is a perfectly cromulent place for it. #7 – Ghost of Tshushima This was the first game I played in the year and probably the first game I played which had the new generation “wow” factor to it. By the end I had had my fill and (spoiler warning) when I bought the Dead Space remake I mostly stopped playing it. With that said, it’s the sort of game where you can go from sitting down to play to “oh god where did the day go” in seemingly an instant. The sort of game where you venture over yonder hill to do a side quest and end up saving a village, writing a haiku and chopping down some bamboo. I’ve jumped back into it throughout the year and it remains as fun and as gorgeous as when I first played it. If you have Playstation Plus you basically need to have this in your library just so you can do the same. I do still dislike some of the NPCs but if a game can get you actively dislike NPCs when it is trying to then that’s something of an achievement. #6 – Returnal See above about Playstation Plus and having this in your library. Awesome, just absolutely awesome. Some minor gripes but they pale in comparison to how good the gameplay is. Looks amazing, plays amazing, story is much better than it needs to be and by the end I was so into this that I couldn’t see out. Just absolutely awesome, should probably be higher. #5 – Elden Ring Did my first magic run this year. It’s good, it’s Elden Ring. You know this, bring on the DLC. #4 – Resident Evil 2 Remake I first played this through during covid lockdowns and enjoyed it. I completed the A and B scenarios and then proceeded to not think about it. Then, and I don’t know what inspired me to do this, for some reason this year I had a look at the requirements for the achievements / trophies for this game and decided to try my hand at the S+ hardcore ranks. To say it breathed new life into this game would be an understatement. From that point on I was so hooked on this game that I found myself thinking about it when I wasn’t playing it. Routing the next section, when to do my saves, whether I needed to grab that item now or when I came back. To me that’s the absolute tell-tale sign when a game has got you. I mean properly properly got you. Doing the police station section during an S+ run is about as pure a gameplay experience as I have had this year. The game that taught me to accept resetting if things weren’t going my way, to git gud. First S+ run: 50 seconds to spare with Claire, never looked back. #3 – Hollow Knight According to the Playstation wrap up this is my most played game of this year. And what a game. Gorgeous to look at, gorgeous to play. Supremely tilting when it doesn’t go your way but so rewarding when it does. You won’t believe how much the affairs of a society of bugs can worm itself into your brain. I have a feeling that this is going to join Dark Souls II in being a game that I do a run of each year and just slip into. Slip into having my kidneys stomped by a troupe leader. #2 – Dead Space Remake I went back and forth on whether to have this or Hollow Knight at #2. In the end what made me go for DS Remake was the fact that this game convinced me to buy a pair of inzone headphones to fully appreciate it, and any game for which I buy actual hardware must be doing something right. Unlike RE4R I did play the original Dead Space, quite a lot in fact, and this is just the definitive version for me. Emphasises the strengths, smooths out the weaknesses. I was cynical about this sort of thing, and continue to be so, but for me this is what a remake should be. Isaac talks, so what? Surprised myself it landed so high but looking back on it I had so much fun on my playthroughs of this. I really want to highlight as well how immersed you are in the game on this as well, it feels like you go from clicking on it to in the Ishimura in no time at all and then when you are playing it you’re just so in the world. You can practically feel Isaacs big boots stomping around the metal grating. Brilliant. #1 – Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice I hated Sekiro. Hated it. Stupid game. Unfair.   Skill issue. But for some reason I persevered. Continued smashing my head against the combat system. And dear reader, the strangest thing happened: I got it.  Not only did I get it, but I got it to the extent that I no longer had to think about what I was doing but I could actually see the game as was in front of me. It’s good. It’s the rare sort of good that when you go back to something else, it feels like a step down.  First run? Probably 40 hours, can’t remember how long but it took forever. Second run? Sub 10. By the third and fourth runs I was one with the game. I felt like Jack Torrence and The Overlook Hotel, we were simpatico.   Just some good lads messaging each other about video games. It’s not like other From Software titles, it’s not really like most other action games really. It’s not for everyone. But if you have made it this far into this post and you’re struggling with Sekiro, thinking you’re going to drop it, I promise you if you stick with it it’s worth it. It has given me a satisfaction like few, and I mean very few, games I can think of. It’s downright bizarre, one moment it feels like you’re trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with your feet against the clock while a howler monkey yells at you and the next it is so zen it’s practically relaxing. The jump from “I will never beat Owl” to “Huh, I just no hit Owl” is the blink of an eye it seems. And when you get in that flow, oh my loving god. You’re a combination of Jonah Lomu, Didier Drogba and Randy Moss just running through motherfuckers. You’re Adrian Peterson and Barry Sanders. You’re 90s Michael Jordan. You’re 80s Mike Tyson. You’re King Kong with a 20 tonne nutsack. I could probably go through Genichiro now by sound alone, clang clang clang (delay) clang clang clang check and jump, mikiri or parry. Beating Owl (Father)? God it’s good. Shadows may die twice but Sekiro won’t do, what a loving game. Thanks for reading and I hope everyone has a nice Christmas (or however you celebrate). Wishes for gaming in 2024? I get time to start BG3 and maybe the industry to be a bit less lovely.
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Dec 23, 2023 19:15
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TimberJoe posted:
No don't worry, you do have good taste. People tie themselves in knots trying to justify hating DS2 and the real truth is it's great. (Except the snowfield boss run). Majula music is top tier, also Skeleton Lords and Ruin Sentinels.
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Dec 23, 2023 19:51
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Objective Action posted:Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend Thanks for this one friend. I picked it up since it went on sale for Steam Winter Sale and I'm loving it lots already. Definitely feels immediately familiar as a Slay the Spire fan but has lots of little things that set it apart. Also I got to witness Mokou & Kaguya having a physical brawl over an argument about the Nintendo Game Girl and NFTs? Incredible.
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Dec 23, 2023 20:00
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oops i hit enter too soon. real post to come later.
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Dec 23, 2023 20:12
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the Paper posted:1. Hunt Showdown  Hunt was my #1 in 2021, glad it's still making lists!
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Dec 23, 2023 21:28
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oddium posted:
I got it while I was in high school at the tiny video games store in the local farmer's market. That store will always have a special place in my heart because it's where I got Total Annihilation on a whim, a game which became my favourite RTS for the next decade. But on that day I was there to buy Wing Commander Privateer + Expansion second-hand. After paying for it, I found out that the expansion disc wasn't in the jewelbox, and rather than try to figure out how to process a refund he asked if I had a PSX and then offered to throw in a copy of Omega Boost as a replacement. Privateer was a mistake, but I had a lot of fun with Omega Boost, albeit not for long; it's a pretty short game.
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Dec 23, 2023 22:02
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Omega Boost owned except I could never beat the stage that was timed.
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Dec 23, 2023 22:26
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I thought about adding V Rising here just to make my list ten games, but I quit my playthrough after a dozen hours because I read they'll have their 1.0 release soon. So maybe next year. 9: Wartales  This game is alright. I was pretty interested in it when I first heard about it before release, and I had played Northgard from the developer (Shiro Games) before, another alright game. It's got many different game mechanics that tie into being a mercenary company struggling to get by, and all the mechanics are fairly thin but otherwise acceptable. The big issue with the game is that the art design and writing is subpar. It's kind of a soulless romp around different countrysides with bland band members. I still think it's fun for what it is. They recently added a sea region DLC with boat traversal and combat, sorta like Deadfire's. I love island and sea combat game settings so it was right up my alley. 8: Everspace 2  I haven't played the first one so no comment on that or the developer. It's basically like a loot RPG AKA Diablo but in space with environment puzzles. I was interested to see where the story went after the intro because it seemed to be more about political intrigue concerning resources and ownership of sectors in space, but the story really isn't that. The ship classes, combat, and missions are actually really fun until about the last 25% of the game and by then I was just fatigued and uninterested in the story resolution. Still, that first 75% is pretty good. You may get tired of the environment puzzles much quicker, though. 7: Sail Forth  This one is still in early access by a sole developer but I figured I'd throw it in. Again, love sea combat games. The scope of it reminds me of A Short Hike, a fantastic indie game, but with a lot less writing and less of a focused aesthetic. It's still a cute game with a relaxed gameplay loop. 6: Dyson Sphere Program  DSP rules. It's kind of not finished but they just added combat to it and they did so in a really smart manner. Honestly the developers are incredibly diligent and objective about both the gameplay and the art style of the game. It's a game that has more surprises than you'd think, and even if you assume you're not someone who would enjoy a factory building game I would advise trying it out. I certainly don't enjoy games in that vein, but DSP has a planetary exploration side and holistic goal to the entire process that just makes it exciting to think about even when you're not playing it. 5: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom  Here it is. The holy messiah of the Nintendo kids is back. I enjoyed Breath of the Wild, and didn't have many complaints about it in the end. I may think it's a better game than Tears of the Kingdom, though I'm not quite convinced of that. It seems like TOTK is a reflection of BOTW, where everything it is and does is judged in comparison to it by me. The matching world is likely the foundation for all of that line of thought. The three-layered map is awesome for the space of exploration it provides, but sadly very repetitive. With the middle layer being the least repetitious but very reminiscent of BOTW's world with new things scattered around, it only took a short amount of time for me to get bored with TOTK's world. I never took issue with BOTW's weapon durability, so when they added Fusing I didn't feel gratified. It was just more inventory focused with a goofy aesthetic. The cutscene interstitials felt disorganized and vague, even when you went back to watch them in order. Several times in the game, climbing up to a tree's canopy or just standing on a roof looking out over a village the framerate would tank to unacceptable levels on the Switch. Sometimes it would get tiring enough on my eyes that I just put the game down. The Great Deku Tree in BOTW was endurable in small doses, but with TOTK it happens way too often, even just every time you start snapping things together. It has great dungeon and environment setpieces, even better than BOTW for most of them, but overall it's still got so many flaws. 4: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty  I had significant anticipation for CP2077's initial release, but steadfastly disliked the game after I played it for being too much of a GTA clone for my tastes. Phantom Liberty doesn't necessarily address that, but the smaller city location it adds is denser with less obvious set dressing megabuildings to drive by. The Dogtown narrative and ending permutations the DLC adds are significantly better, to the extent that it lifts the entire game up. If the entire original game was of the same quality as the Konpeki Plaza heist and Phantom Liberty, it would have been amazing. The music and cutscenes are still incredible. The combat got better with the update but I'm still somewhat cold on that side of the game. 3: Octopath Traveler 2 I'm an unabashed fan of the first Octopath Traveler so yeah I was gonna like the second one. I don't think there's really anything bad to say about it. Maybe the ending narrative seems like a incongruous rugpull? It's not really that bad, but for certain characters they don't attempt to set the stage for their role in the ending. It's got fun and varied party members, great music, and tons of JRPG combat to be had. What's not to like? 2: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon  ACVI feels so satisfying to play. Finely tuned, frenetic combat with constant mech part upgrades and options is the holy grail. The environment design is peerless. No surprise from From Software there. The music and sound design are so intense and thematic for the setting. It's an awesome game. I only wish the narrative had more organic branching, as it is the player is required to think about their three playthroughs consciously with a focus on selecting the right branching missions to get the playthrough they need. It's not a big flaw but if you gently caress up then you have to start an entire other playthrough, and many of the players may not even be willing to start subsequent playthroughs without being tipped off. 1: Baldur's Gate 3  Yeah it's this thing. Obviously Larian gets to independently fund their big breakout game after their Kickstarter games (which I don't mean to imply were niche). I spent so much time starting new playthroughs and thinking of new builds to play and how to address certain encounters. The items that Larian bombarded the game with are probably the secret to gamer brain minmaxing. 5e already has issues that plenty of people have pontificated on, and Larian decided smartly to short circuit some of the handwringing around the system by itemization. It's not perfect, but the rest of game makes up for it because it's all character interaction and dialogue outside of combat. And wow, does this game have a lot of it. The writing team put in the work on BG3, and the voice actors played their roles very well. It's interesting to think of what Larian might make next, if it ended up being even better than BG3.
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Dec 23, 2023 23:08
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fridge corn posted:2. Valkyrie Profile – 1999, tri-Ace. Composer: Matoi Sakuraba ♫https://youtu.be/cnDDTg_xqhs?si=H3TLLIdV8owzOQVT ♫ God, what a showdown. It shall be engraved upon your soul!
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Dec 24, 2023 00:10
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All right, here's the second half of my GOTY list! First half found here, if you want to read it. 20. Grotto     "Once, shortly after people existed at all, the stars talked to a liar, and the liar talked to people, and people... changed. Once, a fisher, a tree dweller, and a loner in doubt came to the liar, and the stars said "blue". The fisher thought of the sea; the tree dweller thought of the sky; and the loner became sad. Once, drawing the lines of fate, the liar strived to understand people. And ey tried... and ey failed. And ey tried again, because this is a story of failure. But this... is also a story of hope." Grotto is a tale of you, the "Soothsayer", a silent conduit to the stars who receives occasional visitors from the village outside, far below the mountain cave where you have come to reside. These visitors know you can read the stars (and in turn believe you to be divinely touched), and have thus come to ask you to, in turn, ask the stars to answer their queries... and therein lies the main thrust of the game. Grotto is a game about communication - specifically, you communicating what you believe is the best answer to the people who have come to you, and then having to live with the results of what your advice has led to. There are many different constellations you can discover (and a helpful cave wall will expand with each new sign you uncover, for reference), each with a broad, vague, esoteric meaning, but you ultimately will be the one to decide what sign you bring back to the person asking for your help - and while you can control what you answer with, you cannot control how they interpret your answer... or even if they will listen at all. As if that wasn't enough, sometimes if you take too long to decide how to respond, you may find yourself alone in the cave - the other person having made up their mind without your guidance, and left to act upon their decision. Even with the eventual aid of tools to further help you deliberate - the bones of the dead who speak from beyond the grave, a sentient lyre who sees far beyond your cave, and so on - you will often find the answers do not come as easily as you would expect - especially when you do not even get to see the fruit borne of your advice, only hear about it secondhand from those returning to beg favor with you once more. Grotto is a very odd game that I very much enjoyed, but seems to have had a bit of a polarizing response since its release; the impression I've gotten is a lot of people don't like having undefined choices and dislike that it feels like the answers they give aren't even guaranteed to be what actually happens, but honestly those things are what I really like - it stands out as a statement on communication, both in how it succeeds and how it fails. I def think this one's worth checking out if any of the above sounds appealing to you. 19. DIVINATION    DIVINATION is a short game jam game made in a month that was made by, spoilers, the devs that also made what ended up being my GOTY  Similar to Grotto, it's a game about people looking for answers, while you play the one providing those answers, but it's a much more streamlined experience with a much tighter narrative. You play as a pair of sentient, robotic hands, with a reputation for perfect, undeinable accuracy in predicting the future - to the point its rumored you might even be capable of manipulating fate itself. Four people - three humans, one robot - will come to you with their concerns; you can probe for more information, or just jump straight to the fortune-telling - its all up to you. I'm being vague here, but that's because I do think this game is best gone into without many specifics. It's a very short game, but I feel like if you come out of a story wanting more that's a sign that what was there was a great experience.18. Lethal Company  Look, everyone knows what this game is, I don't have to explain anything. All I'll say is any game that lets me watch my friends get their rear end blown out while I'm back on cameras yelling at them for not running away is a good game. 17. Forspoken  Forspoken was actually much higher on the list for a bulk of the year purely because of how fun the movement/combat was, but, well, a game much higher on the list kinda came out and showed it up handily in the combat section, so, womp womp. I do still believe this game was unfairly maligned for what was ultimately some pretty rote quippy dialogue that comprised a sliver of the total game, and I really enjoyed exploring the world and learning more about a legitimately pretty fascinating fantasy setting. It's not a perfect game, but it's a game that didn't deserve to have the studio close before they could even release all the post-launch DLC they'd wanted to make  16. Exoprimal  I finally bit the bullet and picked this up about a month ago, and what I found was a shockingly fun 'turn your brain off and just gently caress around shooting enemies for an hour' game that I'm a little sad doesn't seem to be making much of a splash. Common criticism is that there isn't a traditional solo campaign, but rather you unlock stuff after each match you do (the flavor being it's data recovered in the field or representing time has passed between the matches which let the cast continue their investigations on the side). Mechanically, the game is a kind of weird mishmash of hero shooter like overwatch, horde fighting like left 4 dead or musou games, and PvEvP multiplayer games. My personal favorite exo to play is 'basically Moira from overwatch if she dual wielded and healed allies by shooting them in the head' 15. The Divine Deception  Oh hey, that's the visual novel I'm currently LPing! It's pretty solid if you like weird pseudo-political thriller VNs, I guess. Kind of a weird swerve from the first game, which was a somewhat standard death game in the vein of danganronpa, but from what we've seen of the third game, that one might be a bit closer to the first. 14. Producer 2021     Stop reading this and watch the trailer for this game right now if you think you're remotely interested based on the screenshots, and if you are, don't read the rest of this part. Producer 2021 is a game by Stuffed Wombat, the maker of a game called Mosa Lina that I've already seen pop up in this thread before this post. A major part of the experience is not knowing the deal going in, as the game heavily rewards exploration and experimentation - this is possibly one of the weirdest games I've played ever, not even just this year, and I greatly enjoyed getting sucked into this alien, unexplainable, unsettling experience. Also, the music was by a one Thor High Heels, and it loving rips, immediately slammed it into my Spotify library the second I could. 13. Rollerdrome  Rollerdrome is a game about dual wielding guns while rollerblading and doing tricks to refill your ammo while trying to survive/defeat crowds of enemies attempting to take you down. If that alone doesn't sell you on at least checking this out, I really don't know what to tell you. The story is inspired by the movie Rollerball and the book Running Man, and it shows, but not in a bad way; it feels like a refinement/exploration of the themes those pieces set down, and while the story is mostly muted/told through environmental details between levels, it's still an overall pretty fun experience. I'm pretty sure this game's on Gamepass, too, if that helps sweeten the deal a little. 12. Frail Hearts: Versicorae Domlion     I jokingly called this 'Fear and Hunger if it was Italian' when talking to a friend about it, but unlike Funger this is a much shorter, much tighter experience that's pretty light on the RPG elements unless you play on the hardest difficulty (some people have even derogatorily called it a walking sim/adventure game with a handful of RPG fights, which... isn't that off, fights are pre-defined spots in the story, there's no random encounters). A full playthrough will only run you about 10 hours, maybe another hour or two if you do the optional content/go for the best ending. Without getting too into specifics for anyone interested in trying this out, you follow four different people's stories as they experience strange paranormal happenings in the fictional city of Gris, with a fifth person manipulating events behind the scenes to get the outcome he desires. For those familiar with Funger, I will also say this game doesn't go nearly as hard on the grotesque/explicit content as Funger does, it's not exactly cheery but it does show a bit more tact/restraint in regards to some subjects. 11. Honkai Star Rail  Other people in this friend have said enough that mirrors my own feelings on this game so instead I'm just going to say: Numby is my friend and I would die for him  Also Star Rail is what got me to uninstall Genshin wholesale so, uh, yeah. Lol. It's probably one of my favorite gacha games specifically because of how unimportant the gacha is to the overall play experience - any game like this where you can pull for faves and not feel pressured to pull for meta are going to be better in the long run, but they could literally cut the gacha completely and the game would still function perfectly fine.10. Great Ace Attorney 2  I played the first game last year but didn't start on 2 until early this year, and holy poo poo what an improvement. This game makes the first one look like nothing but an introduction, and the way it pays off most of the seeded plot threads is incredibly strong. The music, writing, characters, visual spectacle, everything is incredible, and I really hope once we finally get AA7 they take a lot of the improvements made in the remaster of both games, because this set a new bar for how ace attorney games should feel. People have been gushing about this duology since it dropped and I'm just hitching my list to the many, many, MANY existing recommendations - again, like some of the other games, on this list, you don't need me to tell you it's good lol. It's not my number one favorite in the franchise, but it's an easy top 3 entry, bar none. You don't need to have played the main series to start with this duology (though I do feel like it'd be a little bit of a drop going from this to the HD remaster of 1-3, just my personal take), but this is going to be a great standalone entry for someone new to the series regardless. 9. Process of Elimination     Process of Elimination is a game I was excited for ever since it was first announced to be getting localized. I have.... a pretty extensive list of VNs/games that I would kill to have localized, and this was on that list, so even though there were initial reports that it was pretty derivative and hadn't gotten that much interest over in Japan when it first released, that didn't stop me from still preordering it. And... I honestly still really liked it? I got the impression that a lot of people saw the characters and assumed that the game was going to be a survival game story (not at least in part because the protagonist looks like a certain other well known character......), but what we ended up getting is actually a pretty heartfelt love letter to the mystery genre in general. The setup is reminiscent of the classic mystery novel And Then There Were None, but with a twist - fourteen detectives gather on a mysterious island with the intended goal being to gather their resources and put their heads together to try and deduce the identity of a dangerous serial killer, only to find themselves caught up in a dangerous fight for their lives as they quickly learn the killer is on the island with them, and possibly... even one of them? Where Process of Elimination sets itself apart from other mystery visual novels is the actual investigative gameplay - if you couldn't tell from the screenshots, this is a game made by NIS, and the investigations have you moving detectives around a board to investigate, making it closer to a strategy game than a standard point and click as you have a limited amount of time to investigate everything and uncover all the clues. Personally, I think the fact that the game let the story speak for itself and the "twists" felt natural and paced well rather than being included purely for the sake of having a twist is what helped it end up so high on this list. ...Also possibly on the 'might LP someday' list. Maybe. 8. Live a Live (2022)  If you consider yourself a JRPG fan you owe it to yourself to check this out, even if you end up not falling in love with it. That's just the truth. The fact this remake happened in the first place is a loving miracle, not even getting into the fact that it gave the game so much the original didn't have - the cleaner graphics, the gameplay overhaul/QoLs, the voice acting??? If you told me a couple years ago that Live a Live, a game I "played" when I was still in high school, was getting a complete remake and also a proper western release, I would've laughed you out of the room. And yet, it exists, and it's here, and it's SO good. Now we just need the OST on Spotify/Youtube, SE, cmon 7. Re:Call     The ending feels a bit rushed and the game mechanics that shone through for the whole game take a backseat towards the final part of the game. The fact that despite these factors this game is in my top ten should tell you just how loving strong the rest of the game felt to me before that point. Re:Call is a game from the creator of Evan's Remains, and takes what sounds like a relatively straightforward mechanical concept and runs full sprint with it through an engaging story as you uncover more and more about the people you encounter. The gameplay setup is simple enough: you play most of the game through memories being recalled by a character in the present, and as you experience the memory you can manipulate the memory to have that person "recall" details differently (the time of day an event happened, the location a guard was at when you got there, what color an object was, etc) - and in turn alter reality completely to match their memory of how things were. Functionally, you're altering the past through the person's memory of the past to influence the present day, which is how you solve puzzles, open up new areas to progress in the chapter, or attempt to find a way to survive dangerous encounters. Sounds straightforward enough at first, but the more people that get involved and the more complicated situations become the more you find yourself having to keep track of. The only thing I'll note is important if you do play is if given a password, make sure to make a note of it somewhere, because sometimes you can't get it repeated and it'd suck having to re-do a section because of that. Regardless, this game put the creator on the map for me in a really, really good way, and I really hope they continue to make games because this was an incredibly strong showing and a game I'm definitely going to keep recommending to people in the future. 6. Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE  Its highs aren't as high as any of the Danganronpa games, but its lows weren't as low as any of the Danganronpa games, either, so I mean... It has that going for it, if nothing else. Look, you already knew before the game even came out if you were going to consider this or not based on your feelings with Kodaka's previous work, and I don't know if there's a lot I could really say or do to convince you otherwise. I have a high tolerance for what people refer to as 'wacky anime bullshit', so I of course preordered this as soon as I could. I really enjoyed my time with this game, and even went out of my way to do all the side quests, but I also put it down immediately once it was done and I haven't touched the DLC stuff yet, so... I dunno, that probably says something. I did really enjoy the setting of the perpetually night, perpetually rainy city and while for some having different casts of characters for each mystery case may have made it harder to get emotionally invested I viewed it as basically ace attorney through a danganronpa-y lens, and that did the trick well enough. There's a lot of meat to this setting that I think was intentionally left open for future games to have a different cast and not feel obligated to have much connective tissue, and if they do end up making an actual sequel, I'll probably preorder and play that one too, so I guess I'm the right kind of mark for these games. 5. Methods     Oh hey, it's the VN I'm going to be LPing after I finish Divine Deception! And may already have about a third of the game completely prepared already! That's how much I clicked with this VN just on all levels - visuals, music, aesthetic, and quality of writing. ...And that's not even getting into the respect I have for the creator because the entirety of this game is made by one person - 3d assets, sprites, music, writing, you name it, they did it. Insane. Because I'm going to be LPing this and I DO want people to not know much going in, I'm going to be vague, but the very broad setup is that this is a story about a detective competition - specifically, 100 detectives are competing to solve fake mysteries devised by 100 criminals, with the number of participants reducing after each mystery, over the course of multiple rounds. At the end, the final detective will face off against the final criminal in a mystery of the criminal's sole creation. If the detective can fully solve it, they win, but if they can't, the criminal wins. Regardless of who wins, the winner will recieve a substantial cash prize, but should the criminal win they also will recieve a full pardon of their criminal history, no matter how severe or extensive it may be. As the competition continues, however, questions start piling up, especially in regards to what the purpose of such a competition even holds, or who could be powerful enough to head up such a thing... 4. Final Fantasy 16  This might be a controversial opinion, but I think 16 is my favorite mainline Final Fantasy game now? (Granted, my favorite Final Fantasy game of all time is FFTA, but still...) I don't have the baggage or history with the series the way other people do since the first mainline game I ever played was FF12 (and then I went back to some of the earlier ones - yes, if you're curious, I encountered the FF characters in Kingdom Hearts before I knew what FF was, so that was an interesting way to approach things), and I never actually played FF15 despite owning the Royal Version already (...did watch Kingsglaive, which I have been told is a frankly baffling state to be in), so going into this I had no real preconceptions about what it would be past 'its an action game and there's discourse over whether this will revive the franchise or ruin it'... and I really, really loved my time with it? It's not a perfect game by any stretch, trust me, the gripes about side quests popping up at inopportune times and often in frustrating clumps rather than spreading it out a little better. And there is a pretty solid conversation that has been going on and should keep going on about how the female characters in 16 aren't nearly as well utilized as they should've been (I like Jill, but god does her character arc feel wasted. Please fix this, DLC, please, I'm begging you), but the fact I can say 'this game has my favorite boss fight in an RPG from the past 5 years hands down' and people WON'T KNOW WHICH ONE I'M REFERRING TO should also say a lot. It's the secret Asura's Wrath sequel we didn't know we were going to get. also torgal is the best and every future game should have torgal in it. hell, make a new dissidia game but put torgal in it instead of clive. do it you cowards 3. Hi-Fi Rush  In any other year Hi-Fi Rush would be my GOTY, and if I'm being real with you numbers 2 and 3 are dead even tied for me and I had to flip a coin to figure out which would be which for the actual list purposes. Hi-Fi Rush is a game designed in a lab to hit every single design sensibility of mine, from the vibes to the loving stacked soundtrack (and even the streamer-friendly alternative tracks loving shred?!!?!), to the humor and legitimately lovely cast interactions that make me immediately yearn for an entire series of games of these goofballs going on adventures together. Even the rhythm action gameplay seamlessly clicked for me as someone who grew up loving devouring Rock Band and Osu type games, once I found myself in the zone I just vibed out smashing enemies with my guitar and losing it to each new song I encountered. Hi-Fi Rush is a game I know for a fact I'm going to go back to someday to revisit, it's a game I find myself throwing the soundtrack on consistently, and it's pretty much the perfect ideal of a AA game. 2. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk  Jet Set Radio Future was the first video game I ever played that made me realize that video games were going to be a massive part of my life for the rest of my life. It was the first game that actively changed my entire aesthetic sense, that directly gave me a cornerstone for what would become my musical tastes, and pretty much imprinted on me going forward what I would always be chasing in video games. It's honestly probably still my favorite video game of all time, and in the years since I've basically picked up any, any game that even comes close - Hover, Butterflies, even stuff like Neon Tail is in my Steam Wishlist to check out. So when Team Reptile threw down the gauntlet and said 'fine, we'll do it ourselves, since you won't make any more', I pretty much already had that one marked as my immediate GOTY just on principle (and, well, it's still a bad feeling to not have it at number one, but more on why it isn't when I get to my number one). This game is everything we could've ever wanted from a spiritual successor, while also managing to hit that same 'lightning in a bottle' vibe of understanding what you're playing is an experience that will never be truly replicable without losing something in the process, that anything going forward will need to iterate or change things up to keep things fresh. Not every game needs expanding on or any future content, but I would absolutely eat up literally anything extra Team Reptile ever decided to do for BRC... but they've already confirmed that during development they had so many ideas, concepts, and stuff they wanted to do that they basically have enough stuff for an entire second game/sequel already, so they'll probably just move onto that! But if a game as important as this to me wasn't number one, what was? Well... 1. A Space For The Unbound  A Space For The Unbound is a game released back in January of this year by a small Indonesian game dev studio, a game that they'd been working on for over eight years - a small point and click game about a teenage boy named Atma who discovers he has a strange power that lets him dive into other people's consciousnesses and affect their state of mind. He does his best to ignore this power and continue on with his quiet life in a quiet, small Indonesian town, but more and more strange things begin happening around him, leading him to begin using his power to investigate, along with his girlfriend Raya, and use his power to help out fellow classmates with their own emotional turmoil.    A Space For The Unbound is a game where every stray cat you encounter can be given a name, and the game will remember each and every name each and every time you re-encounter the cat and pet it. It's a game where you can spend an hour trying to beat the high score in the local arcade, or scouring every nook of the town for bottle caps to complete the collection, or trying to locate a full set of gum wrappers to exchange for a prize. See, Atma and Raya write up a bucket list of stuff they want to do before the two graduate high school, and this list forms a lot of side content you can do while exploring town. The devs have put a lot of love and care into fleshing out the town as much as they could without it detracting from the story, all while not compromising on making sure it retains its unique cultural identity as a small town in Indonesia in the 90s. As the stories progress and time passes, you can see things change and it makes the setting really feel alive and fresh in a way not many other indie games in recent years have succeeded in.    A Space For The Unbound is a game that emotionally obliterated me in a way few games have. I don't have heavy emotional reactions to games particularly often; I've gotten misty-eyed for games, everybody has at some point, but not the full-on tears this game yanked out of me with its emotional beats, particularly in the final third of the game. Without getting too specific, the game isn't afraid to shy away from tackling heavy subject matter, from anxiety over the future and feelings of inadequacy to suicidal ideation and trauma from child abuse - which, well, for a game about diving into people's subconscious minds, is kind of to be expected. But it does so with a careful, deft hand, lending the topics the weight and caution that they deserve while also refusing to lessen or dilute the content in the process, in a way that's very respectful. The reason this game is my number one of 2023 is because it's one of those games that I came out physically feeling changed from. I'm not the same person I was when I started playing this game, and the few people I know who played this game have basically expressed the same sentiments to me afterwards.    A Space For The Unbound is a game that, at time of this post, has only shown up in this thread once in total, which is legitimately more than I was expecting, considering how little buzz the game actually got despite basically everyone who played it to completion walking away from it at least emotional, if not singing its praises. None of my friends would've played it if I hadn't told them, and when it was nominated for Games for Impact at TGA earlier this month, I already knew it wasn't going to be what won it, but I was just happy that more people might see it among the other nominees and go 'huh, maybe I'll check that out'. Whenever its soundtrack comes up in shuffle in my library, I get misty-eyed all over again. It's a game that's very dear to my heart, and will probably always have a place in my favorite games going forward, too.  ...And, worst case scenario, I can always just LP it and make people experience it that way. Top 10 list for convenience's sake: 10. Great Ace Attorney 2 9. Process of Elimination 8. Live a Live (2022) 7. Re:Call 6. Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE 5. Methods 4. Final Fantasy 16 3. Hi-Fi Rush 2. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk 1. A Space For The Unbound
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Dec 24, 2023 01:32
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Good stuff, sold me on Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. I love Dreamcast, didn't play Jet at the time, played it just a little on steam years later. It is also cool that they're making a new one and a new Crazy Taxi etc, long live Sega.
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Dec 24, 2023 01:46
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Nice to see the love for Space For The Unbound 
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Dec 24, 2023 02:03
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Process of Elimination looks like something I should try out next year. I'd just need to fit it in... somewhere...
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Dec 24, 2023 02:04
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Mix. posted:the secret Asura's Wrath sequel we didn't know we were going to get This makes me want to play FFXVI more than anything else I have read so far
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Dec 24, 2023 02:11
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haveblue posted:This makes me want to play FFXVI more than anything else I have read so far It's pretty accurate at times
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Dec 24, 2023 02:12
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While I played more than 10 games this year, these are the 7 I enjoyed most that I'd care to talk about. I wasn't planning on writing one of these, but I wanted to make sure A Highland Song got some representation. 7. King's Quest 1 I played this game a ton as a child, but don't think I've played it this century. I had a blast replaying it. I was impressed by how much of the game I remembered subconsciously; completed it without any hints. I don't know if the game holds up or not without the nostalgia, but it'll always have a place in my heart. 6. Obduction Overall, I enjoyed Obduction a lot. The puzzles are mostly solid, and it's a worthy Myst clone. However, the game has a couple of faults that hold it back considerably, to the point where I'm glad I played it once, but would probably never replay it. The core issue is that the game's load times are atrocious. This in and of itself isn't horrible, but the problem is compounded by the fact that one of the core puzzle mechanics requires moving back and forth between the worlds, making certain puzzles incredibly tedious chores. 5. The Case of the Golden Idol DLC I loved The Case of the Golden Idol and wanted more, and more was provided. The quality of the DLC cases was a little uneven, but some of them were exceptional. So excited that they're making a new game next year! 4. Cassette Beasts Cassette Beasts is the most fun I've had with a Pokemon since Blue. I played the hell out of it, and even wrote some software to make it easier to plan builds. Super fun game. However, I did burn out on the post-game grind, and haven't come back for the DLC yet. 3. Crystal Project I haven't finished this game yet, it got put on pause when A Highland Song came out, but I have been enjoying it immensely. My favorite part is the world exploration. I love just hoping around, looking for secrets, and appreciate that this is what the game is all about, without trying to bore me with some story I don't care about. Exploration aside, the combat and classes are fun. However, I do think the regular fights can become tedious, because the game lacks enemy variety. So, once you find a combo that works for an area's locals, you just repeat it over and over again. Looking forward to getting back to this game soon. 2. Riven: The Sequel to Myst I played Riven as a child with my father when it was released. I'm not sure if I've replayed it since. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it again. I can't think of a single negative thing to say about it. The music, world design, puzzles, everything is perfect. 1. A Highland Song If you've played any other inkle games, you know a little of what to expect heading into A Highland Song. It's a game where it's impossible to get the whole story in a single play through. On subsequent play throughs you have access to knowledge and items gained from prior plays. This was one of the core ideas of Heaven's Vault, but while the implementation was problematic in that game, it's perfected in A Highland Song. The goal of A Highland Song is to traverse the Scottish wilderness to your uncle's lighthouse within 7 days. Making it to the lighthouse only takes 2 to 4 hours, depending on your route, at which point you can begin again, carrying over your knowledge and inventory, as well as certain world changes. The gameplay consists of light platforming, exploration, and a simple rhythm mini game. As you move through the hills, you find maps that identify paths through to the next valley. You use the maps by climbing to the peaks of the surrounding hills, from which you can see the lay of the land and attempt to locate the paths on the maps. There are 8 distinct valleys that you progress through. Once you progress to a new valley, there is no going back. Within the valleys, the peaks are connected by the rhythm based mini game, where you run through the hills to a Talisk tune. Along the way, you'll meet people and uncover secrets. The secrets fill in the game's story and mythology of the hills. The game's strength is its atmosphere. It makes you feel like you're lost in the hills and around every corner there's something new to discover. I've played it for over 35 hours now, over the course of over a dozen runs. I hand drew 45 pages of maps, detailing how the hills are connected. I almost have all of the achievements, but many of the games biggest secrets are not tied to achievements. I expect to continue playing even after I finish the achievements, because it's a fun, relaxing game with more secrets to uncover. I will say that the secrets are more about the journey than the destination, so if you're playing the game and not enjoying it, the secrets aren't going to make it better. I highly recommend the game if you're looking for a chill, atmospheric, exploration based adventure. I wish it had come out at a time when it would have gotten more attention. moosferatu fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Dec 25, 2023 |
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Dec 24, 2023 02:45
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:God, what a showdown. It shall be engraved upon your soul! So many of the voice lines from Valkyrie Profile are just burned into my memory. Come to me, dark warriors! Battle awaits us! I need more copies of myself so that one of me can replay old favourites like VP while the rest of me are doing other things.
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Dec 24, 2023 02:47
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At last, I have had the time to write this up! This list contains all the games I played in 2023 that I have at least some good things to say about. Games that I just didn't like I did not bother ranking, and there were only a few of those. 17. Evil Genius 2  Zalika takes the hypnotized world in her hand! This was a tentative inclusion on the list but I played so much of it and it compelled me to 100% it so at the end of the day it gets a spot. It's not at all what it was advertised as and most of the features that some poor dev spent a lot of time on are meaningless on higher difficulties and pointless on lower ones but I bought it super-discounted and found a rather soothing gameplay loop of 'make money to make money as numbers go up and then decide to win the game.' It's very much a 'chill with it while you watch TV' type of game, or at least it is if you want to enjoy it, which I did. 16. Find All 4: Magic  Observe that I personally found all of these otters on their little boat. I could just insert the Arrested Development "I don't know what I expected" .gif here. It's just a microgame where you click things to find them and then they get colored in and your lizard brain goes yay. It delivers exactly what it promises for very cheap. 15. Europa Universalis IV  A random nation I was given to play as. Nupe, a Sunni sultanate attempting to impose control on its Fetishist population while surrounded by stronger rivals, all of which will soon be crushed by white people. Every couple years I remind myself that during a fit of pandemic madness I paid for what was then almost all of this game and it's DLCs (discounted, but still...). Every year or so since I get the itch to figure out how this game works. I play a session or two then realize I missed half of the mechanics and misunderstood the other half. I tell myself I'll try again next year. 2023 was one of those years. Can't wait to repeat it again next year! 14. Kind Words  My little dude hanging out in his tiny rock island house with a giant squid writing nice things to strangers! This is ranked lower not because I don't love it or a lack of quality but because it's rather tenuous how much of a "game" this is. It's basically an interactive Secret Words, people post something they are insecure about or worried about anonymously and you send them reassurance or sympathy equally anonymously and that's it. It sounds hokey but it works. It also has a really smooth lo fi soundtrack that makes for great background music (which is playing as I write this). 13. Fabledom  A magic beanstalk grows in my little village! The only Early Access game on this list, Fabledom is a cozy little city builder and fairy-tale inspired storybook styled game made by a very small team of developers. Whether it will be complete in 2024 I'm gonna say probably not. There is no complete gameplay loop at the moment. Still, it has very chill vibes and a charming style and every update or so I play through to the end of content and it makes me happy. I don't recommend picking it up yet unless unfinished builder games with fairy tale romance subplots are really your thing, this is more of one to keep an eye on. Bonus points for casual non-binary inclusion. 12. Overboard  You definitely did. A visual novel that has the fun gimmick of being a reverse Agatha Christie story. You play as a murderess who has had enough of her no good husband and tosses him (wait for it) Overboard to start the game. Now you have to get through the rest of the cruise before you get caught! It's a really fun little idea with more to dig into than you might expect. My main criticism is the lack of an easy fast-replay feature to get back to the exact spot you were in to make a different decision. Many of the major decisions you have to get through tons of little ones to reach again and the ability to just start from that point without having to remember all the little choices you made to get to that exact moment would have been nice. That being said, I enjoyed the few hours of content it provided. Also the soundtrack is awesome with era appropriate big band / crooner vibes. 11. Northgard  The Clan of the Kraken makes landfall and the Conquest begins! The little RTS that could just kept could-ing in 2023! A repeat honorable mention from my list last year, this game hits that sweet spot that Warcraft III did back in the day, where you could play the long campaign if you want or try to be a pro online but really its about just setting up a custom map and seeing what happens. All of the clans play differently enough that it's worth figuring out which one you like most (Snake for me) and the DLC model of very cheap alternate clans that you can ignore if the playstyle doesn't suit you is a very nice one. The "conquests" where you play through a series of challenge maps each of which is fairly short is a great way of making all those little sessions feel like they lead up to something cool. When I want something a bit more involved than a time waster but not quite at the level of fully immersive take-over-your-life style, this is one of my go tos. THE TOP TEN! 10. Magic Arena   Let me explain... Okay it's basically digital crack complete with your digitial overloard being unfeeling evil bastards pushing it on a vulnerable population and you probably shouldn't take the first hit but I couldn't really NOT rank this given how it's my go to time waster and the game I almost always play while drinking morning coffee and trying to get my brain to turn on. If you stick to Brawl mode (a non-ranked format where you play with a 100 card deck with no duplicates and a 'commander' who you can always cast) the monetization isn't bad because every new update contains only a few cards you actually want and you need only one copy, so the wildcards you accumulate from playing will get you there. I haven't spent money on this game since I started playing just to avoid going crazy over pandemic (yes, that's a lingering theme in my gaming habits), so it's possible to avoid the insanely bad and predatory monetization that comes with Magic in any format if you stick to that. All that being said, the screenshots above illustrate why I play this game. My enemy has played his commander which triples the number of tokens that get created by other effects. They have equipped it with the "Helm of the Host" an artifact that creates a token copy of the creature that wears it every turn. Because Ojer Taq had it on last turn, it made three copies of the commander. Now with four copies of this creature in play, each token will be produced 81 times. I, on the other hand, have in play a card called "Ethereal Absolution" which gives all of my enemy's creatures a -1/-1 debuff, an "Authority of the Consuls" that gives me 1 life every time he plays a creature and causes it to enter tapped, and an "Angel of Vitality" which increases that to two life. My opponent, I can only assume as an act of sheer madness or moon-touched curiosity, played a card that summons two copies of a 1/1 creature. Because of his board he actually summons 162 copies. However, they all enter as 0/0 creatures and instantly die, while giving me life. His Helm then triggers and creates an additional 81 copies of his commander, each also gives me life. At the end of his turn, in which he played one card I have gained nearly 500 life and he added 242 creatures to his board, 162 of which died instantly. We both lost timeouts just from the computer processing it all. Any game could include something batshit insane like this. Or it could just be another lameass who copies extra turn spells. You just don't get stuff like that in other games. 9. Guild Wars 2  A cat-minotaur dressed like a superhero goes fishing. I have played this game on and off again since launch. It drops a few places from my list last year, but remains ranked. I go years without playing then something, like, say, the entire world shutting down, causes me to dip back in. And it usually keeps me around for awhile - a few years in this case. While 2023 saw my GW2 habits drop off substantially, I did finish off my heavy legendary armor so  . It will probably remain the only MMO I have installed until they shut down the servers. Also the Goon Guilds are good, go find the thread in the MMO forum and join them if you play this.8. Orcs Must Die 2  It's a classic for a reason! It what will become another theme in this year's list, I played Orcs Must Die 2 because I saw that Orcs Must Die 3 was on steam, thought to myself 'hey didn't I really like Orcs Must Die 2? Why don't I just play that instead?' And uh, yeah. This game rules. I don't know that the "active tower defense" style of game was ever done better. It's a very straightforward game with a very straightforward style and it works. You pick whether you'd rather be a himbo with a magic shotgun or a barbie doll with a magic wand and then drop a customizable set of traps and gizmos or arm yourself with weapons to take out the waves of enemies coming after you. Why mess with what works? And thus, ten years after buying the game, I finally completed the spellbook of traps.  7. Blood Bowl  A blizzard descends on the stadium as elves and paler elves fight for points! I see a game called Blood Bowl 3 is coming out. Hey, I think to myself. Blood Bowl was fun. A third one? Nice! I check it out. It looks horrible - a buggy mess that's micro-transactioned out the wazoo. I ask myself, why not just play Blood Bowl instead? So I do, and it's awesome. This game was ahead of its time in that in gave you a roster that you didn't dare care about because they were going to get crippled by a random punch or killed by a goblin with a chainsaw the moment you started counting on them. Each game is fairly short, and you may not get through the season anyway so play fast, die young, and marvel at it when you manage to win. Fun stuff. 6. Civilization III  Behold the majesty of the Indian core! It's 2023 and Civilization is losing its way. Ha, get it? Get it? No but seriously I felt the urge to play this franchise and just couldn't bring myself to play the more recent versions. And then I remembered...don't I still have Civ III? Hell yeah I do (and if you don't it's like $5 on steam for the whole thing). I set the game on a middling difficulty. I do my usual derping around, building, expanding and ... wait what is this? A huge army just landed. Fifty units per stack. More are coming. I can't beat it. Even taking advantage of terrain and rushing fortifications and extra units I just can't put up the numbers. They are merciless. They have no reason to let up on me. Even if pay them off to end the war I'll never recover from this. I watch in horrified awe as I remember, slowly, I remember ... Civilization was once a game that it was possible to lose at, even on lower difficulty levels. In the ages before one-unit-per-tile and a dozen currencies and mechanics that the AI had no idea how to use and it was just a matter of how much more ahead do you want to get each turn, this game was hard and felt rewarding to win. I restart. I am honed in. Paying attention now, managing everything in detail not because it gives me an extra +2 to something or other that will never matter, but because I need to to win. I fight tooth and nail and dominate my half of the map, creating a small buffer zone of defeated enemies and stunted rivals that tolerate being under my yoke but are always looking for a chance to break it. I start crossing the oceans. I meet an AI China that has done the same on its half of the world, dominating it. This world has two superpowers. The rest of the game is a mad geopolitical dance of diplomacy, trade wars, proxy wars, fighting over precious resources on remote islands while keeping our cores secure. We go from times of mutual prosperity and advancement, selling each other our advanced technologies and protecting our areas of influence, to full out war with our massive armies clashing in the open seas and in middle-ground terrain. I barely eke out a science victory a few turns before China would have won it all. I sit back and marvel and how fun that was. I missed you Civ III. drat you were a good game. 5. Guardians of the Galaxy   Okay team, here's the plan... If you're a fan of these characters, and you get the game on sale, this is a definite recommend. The story and portrayal of the people involved is top notch. If you don't know or care about who these people are, then, well, don't buy the game! The combat engine is good, but better than the game ever makes use of which leaves you with a sense of fun, but also a bit of a sense that there could have been a lot more done with it. The collectibles are very meh (all the good costumes are in chapter 13) and the level design well...someone really thought squeezing through tight spaces and sliding down ramps was compelling I guess. Still, I enjoyed it, especially the comic-friendly portrayals of the characters with a really good supporting cast and the story was just the right mix of superhero melodramatics. 4. Birth     A sample of the disquieting comfort that awaits you. It's very short (2 hours for 100% at a chill pace), it's very simple (gameplay is a series of simple game mechanics and puzzles) and I've never been left a feeling anything like it. This game stands out because of its ambiance, it's atmosphere, its vibe. The world is alienating and mildly horrifying, and yet comforting and familiar at the same time, never close to monachopsis. In fact its quite the opposite, this setting presents a ruined city that should be alarming and yet, you get a sense of belonging that is hard to describe. After I was finished I had to sit back and wonder what was it that resonated so well here? The recollection of lost joys? Finding happiness in the littlest of things? The universal desire to simply be? This is everything an indy game should be. It has a unique vision, it doesn't overstep its technical limits, and it respects your time. And it's also really cheap so you're out almost nothing if you want to see if you agree or not. 3. Crusader Kings III       Steam fails to stress me by reminding me how much I played. Count Richard is driven mad by failing to live up to his saintly mother. Gyelmo Bhasundara learns to be generous and enjoy her derpy cat instead of trying to match her own mother's legacy, thus paving the way for her daughter to be even greater still! Last year's #1 game slips a few spots, but remains one of my favorites of all time. It is getting a bit long in the tooth as bugs added by updates, and the increasingly unhelpful UI start to weigh it down, but it still offers emergent stories like absolutely nothing else. You can go from one ruler being a pious saint to the next torturing their siblings over their inheritance and back again, leaving legacies of drama and medieval madness in their wake while you build your culture and faith to what you wish to see in the world. This year especially the big expansion 'Tours and Tournaments' is the best DLC this game has ever had to offer, and while I haven't played much of the more recent Persia feature pack I like what I see as far as better clan play and crypto-religions. It feels very much like what was started as a map-painting game with strong roleplay elements is now much more feeling like a roleplaying game with strong strategy elements, which I'm a big fan of. CK3 remains the best example of how what is ostensibly a grand strategy game can be a lot more than just painting the map (notice how none of my screenshots even show it) and with a surprisingly short learning curve and consistent support from the creators I'm hoping it breaks through some of the clutter and streamlines things while keeping up with the very good pace of content it has established over the past year. I would be pretty surprised if this didn't get ranked next year too, but hey, you never know. Now if they could just give me my steppe nomad focused DLC.... 2. Disco Elysium  Hell yeah. I want to extend a profound thank you to all of the goons who ranked this game last year. Reading all of those rave reviews is what prompted me to try again. I bounced off Disco Elysium on the first go around, finding the interface weird and the sudden death from trying to talk to a small child demoralizing. I am so, so, glad I tried again. Disco Elysium is a triumph of human expression that you owe to yourself to experience if you have the peace and time to do so. It is the opposite of some of the earlier games on this list where you just zone out with a movie on. No, you need to read every word of this and let it sink in and then deal with what it provokes. The ability to interlace the profoundly fantastic, the personally banal, and the globally intricate, all into this familiar story of a cop trying to solve a murder is just astounding.  Don't try to label me!! I'm not going spoil anything because even now many years later it's worth playing blind if you can, but there were several moments in this game where I started to truly understand the protagonist and it really broke my heart. In particular there was a scene that starts with something goofy and irreverent that quickly spirals into escalating events that tear open the psyche of the main character in such a bleak way that I actually experienced a sense of panic trying to find a way to resolve it like a responsible adult and when I realized why I didn't have that option just sort of stared at the screen for awhile in something approaching shock as it all sank in. Games don't really ever do that sort of thing do they? They let you feel like a conquering hero or a space explorer or all these other escapist fantasies but they don't ever rip open the human experience like this, and show you so starkly and humanly what its like to be such a wreck. And that was just one scene. Thank you again for everyone who gave me the nudge to really sit down and experience this. In most other years this would have been #1. But no other year ever gave us.... 1. Baldur's Gate 3      Even with a huge break after the initial binge this is my most played game by far. Some random shots of the tale of my first playthrough, a half-elf conjurer who did the right thing in the face of evil, fell in love with a Githyanki, and stood in awe at the rage of an aasimar on the way to saving the day! It was already very, very good, but now with Patch 5 there have been significant improvements to two of my biggest complaints about the game at launch - the lack of an epilogue and performance in Act 3. With major improvements in both areas, I'm now completely confident saying this is the best RPG I've ever played. That's right, it took 21 years, but at long last, Morrowind has finally been dethroned. What I really love about Baldur's Gate 3 is the replayability. There's a reason so many people have spent so much time in Act 1. The number of times you think 'I wonder what would happen if I did x instead of y' or wondering if you can take a completely different approach entirely is frequent, and so well rewarded. The game gives you so many ways to solve every problem, and its so obvious the people who made this thought of so much of it advance that they are expecting your weirdest and wildest ways to go through their game. There's a very strong sense of "what would my character do?" That is more expansive than anything outside of a visual novel. To deliver this variety with AAA graphics and absolutely top notch voice acting is incredible.        Just some examples of what you can do with the character creator. A human ranger, a dragonborn paladin, a Githyanki wild magic barbarian, a dwarven life priest, a duergar war priest, and a gnome illusionist. With a bonus Half-Orc dark urge berserker. I'm not gonna belabor it as you can read the praise of this game anywhere you choose and many times in this thread already. But there is such a special joy in playing something you know was made by the same kind of nerd as you, for the certain type of nerd you are, and then see it become extremely popular. There are now millions of people in the world who not only know what a githyanki is, they have opinions about them. That's just wild to me to think about. The fact that the game is very pro-LGBT drove a ton of bigots up the wall is just icing on the cake. Baldur's Gate 3 isn't just my game of the year, it is maybe the best videogame I've ever played in my life. I'd be very happily surprised if anything comes out in the near future that comes close to it. And there you have it. 2023 really was an amazing year for games. edit: Easy Tally List 10. Magic Arena 9. Guild Wars 2 8. Orcs Must Die 2 7. Blood Bowl 6. Civilization III 5. Guardians of the Galaxy 4. Birth 3. Crusader Kings III 2. Disco Elysium 1. Baldur's Gate 3 SlothBear fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Dec 24, 2023 |
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Dec 24, 2023 03:27
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Cool stuff, and I sure love Orcs Must Die 2.
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Dec 24, 2023 04:36
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