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I'm gonna do a big dumb effort post while I'm bored at work but I need to wait for smash to come out
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Nov 28, 2018 16:03
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Loving that people are repping Path of Exile. It's been consistently my most played game year after year, but I wouldn't really consider it a "goty" since it's just like constantly there waiting to suck me in again. More like a game of all time for me.
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Dec 1, 2018 19:27
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#10 - Octopath Traveler This was a good year for RPGs, or at least the kind that I like, and the common aspect they share is that they all have a really great structure. That’s the aspect of my first game on the list that I like most. The structure of Ocotopath is like a semi-open world CYOA, with plenty of opportunities to set the pace to your liking. Not to say this its executed perfectly, with the early game feeling a little dull if you choose to collect all the party members immediately, but by the mid game everything is kind of opened up to poke at and you can start getting into encounters that are interesting and challenging. The battle system is quite nice with a very satisfying "break" mechanic that leaves your enemies open for big attacks once you exploit their particular weakness. The character class system is another strong point and I especially had fun trying out different job combos once I unlocked the advanced jobs. Game has kind of an inscrutable entry into the endgame but that didn't sour my feelings on it too much. Biggest point against it is the fairly sparse interaction between party members, but individually I thought most the characters came across as really likable. #9 – Celeste Love a good platformer but they're kind of dime a dozen when you're looking at pixel indie stuff. Celeste transcends that label though and has some of the tightest design, both in terms of the controls and environments, of anything on this list. Every level, hell practically every screen, has something that builds off the previous one in creative ways. I'm rarely able to accomplish the toughest challenges in these precision platformers but Celeste was just such a joy to play that it hardly felt like a struggle. #8 - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate To be honest I don't even know what to say here. Its Smash and its got all the characters. I mean that alone could probably make the list for me but Ultimate also has a really neat single player experience too. World of Light is maybe a bit bloated, with too many trash fights, but overall I really like the concept and I think it’s a good value add for the game. Not to mention that that’s on top of the classic mode, which is also really fun. Combined with the general improvements to the core mechanics (movement feels great now) I think it’s safe to say that this will end up being my favorite Smash yet. #7 - La-Mulana 2 The original La-Mulana was just such a fascinating game to me. When I played the MSX style version like a decade ago it felt like I'd happened upon some truly archaic poo poo, a game that seemed to actively discourage you from making progress. I love a game where the theme kind of mirrors the feeling you get playing it, and solving puzzles in La-Mulana truly feels like you're stumbling through ancient mechanisms designed to trick interlopers. The sequel pretty much delivered exactly what I wanted and expected. It is at its core just more La-Mulana, with some nice quality of life features and a little less obtuse puzzle solving. I think they did a better job ramping up the difficulty in the early game. Where as LM1 can make you feel like you hit a brick wall within the first hour, LM2 gives you a gentler introduction to what the game will come to expect of you, and allows you a little more freedom early on to just explore without having to necessarily solve anything. Eventually that pace picks up and you get into the real meat of the puzzle solving, with classic LM puzzles that span across multiple areas. I think the late game gets a bit tedious and honestly many of the bosses are a pain (they generally weren't great in LM1 either) but La-Mulana still remains a completely unique experience. #6 - Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire This is another game that I think really kills it with its structure. A supremely open-ended RPG that has great character building and extremely refined rtwp combat. The difference between PoE1 and 2 feels exactly like the leap between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. I'd say that I liked PoE1 more than most but it was undeniably a dry as hell take on the infinity engine style of RPG. PoE2 does just about everything better than its predecessor and the result is a game that I think actually deserves to stand next to the legacy of games that inspired it. The central city of Neketaka is the location from which all paths branch out from and its just a delight to explore as its absolutely dense with content. The cultural and factional politics of the region are expressed really well through the dialog, which is much less dull and dreary than PoE1, and its a nice treat that everything is fully voice acted. I think the more open ended structure of game really allowed Obsidian to play to their strengths as a studio and its a drat shame that the sales figures don't appear to reflect the quality of this. #5 - Return to the Obra Dinn If this list was category based Obra Dinn would be a shoe in for Most Novel Concept. Or Best Puzzle Game. Or Best Styyyyle. Anyways this game owns because it works off of a very simple set of rules and builds a tangled web of puzzles around them. You're on a ghost ship and tasked with identifying all of the dead crew members and their cause of death. To solve a "fate" you must know three things: Who died, how and by what means. Correctly solving three fates is met with a musical cue that you will come to savor. It will sustain you. Solving fates starts off simple but will eventually require some extremely clever deductions or even informed guesswork. Just an incredibly tight package here that won't outstay its welcome. #4 - Hitman 2 Okay so this really does feel like a level pack for Hitman 2016. Maybe it would be higher on the list if it bucked the formula a bit. But honestly that formula is so good that just "the same but better" is enough to carry this game a long ways. Pretty much every level in Hitman 2 is like a Sapienza in terms of quality and density. The overall package you get with Hitman 2 deserves some consideration too I think, with all the Hitman 2016 included right in the same launcher (assuming you already owned the complete suite of them) with the improved gameplay changes. I really like that since not only did it give me a reason to check out the old levels but also just having all your stats and accomplishments all in one place further incentivizes me to keep doing more and more. Still working on those mastery levels... #3 - Into the Breach When I started making this list I really didn't expect for Into the Breach to be in the top three. The more I thought about it though the more I realized that this game has a lot going for it and very few flaws on top of just being really fun to play. This game has a lot of really elegant solutions to problems that I see in a lot of tactical strategy games. For one, you're not often finding yourself in situations where you've already won and you're just going through the motions. Generally either things are still dangerous or the game about to be over (or you need to up the difficulty). There is also very little RNG, which gives the game sort of a puzzler feel to it. This leads to the impression that every round is "solvable" even though they won't always be. And when they aren't it won't be because of a roll of the dice, it'll be because three moves earlier you did something that set this current situation into motion. I love that. The game is also extremely clean in how it presents information, nothing is hidden behind nested menus or whatever, the whole battlefield and all your options are pretty much right there in front of you. It’s a really pared down take on the genre, yet there is still so much variety between the different squads. Each one has a really distinct theme that meshes well with their unique abilities and they all have a little bit of a twist for how they need to approach encounters. Favorite squad is the Blitzkrieg btw. #2 - Dragon Quest 11 Right so structure in RPGs. Super important because they're long as hell and full of peaks and valleys between combat and story. Improperly paced RPGs can feel like a real slog, but well paced ones can feel like a journey. The pace of DQ11 is absolutely impeccable. For the uninitiated Dragon Quest games are charming traditional JRPGs that generally move at a speed I'd lovingly describe as plodding. In DQ you arrive at a new village, have a little chat with the locals, tromp around a dungeon a bit, slay a boss monster and then move onto the next village. Repeat for 80 hours. It doesn't sound so stimulating on paper yet the execution of it in these games is masterful and DQ11 does it the best. It’s some combination of fun characters, charming worldbuilding and combat that feels just interesting enough to engage but not overwhelm. Each narrative arch and its accompanying dungeon delve is like a bite size piece of what adds up to a grand adventure that unfolds over the course of an appropriately long length of time. And that grand adventure is itself just one arch in an even more grand adventure that encompasses the whole of the game. Games of this length can often feel insurmountable due to sheer time commitment, but DQ invites you to take your time with it and chip away at your own pace. Overall just an extremely comfy game to relax with. #1 - Monster Hunter World I'd never played a Monster Hunter game before this summer when MHW came to PC. Now its one of my favorite series. When MHW was released on consoles last winter I thought "Huh that looks pretty fun, but I'll wait". Had I known then what I know now I wouldn't have waited. I couldn't have. It makes sense since the MH games had always looked to encompass aspects of games that I really like, and I'd always be vaguely aware of the series. But even in hindsight I'm glad I started with MHW because I think that it's inarguably the best entry point into the series. It has the core of the MH experience but in a package that’s easier to swallow, with sick graphics, fluid controls and a bunch of quality of life changes. I'm giving the top spot to MH World, but I'm also going to mention Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate because its basically the other side of the MH coin here. I played nearly as much GU as I did World this year (totaling hundreds of hours of MH) and, while its rough around the edges by comparison, what you get out of it is so worth it. It’s not just the huge breadth of content, of which MHW is somewhat lacking, but also the "classic" monhun experience. That's what I really appreciate about GU, even though I'm a series noob I could play that game and get a glimpse into the past at everything that MH offered before World. Its funny that I don't think I could have gotten into GU without playing World, and playing GU gave me a new appreciation for World and the series as a whole. Really they're both my GOTY but I'm comfortable settling on World and I can't wait to see where this franchise goes. I spent months in a MH themed fugue state and hell I don’t want it to ever end.
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Dec 14, 2018 21:39
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Loving that top 5, we did it everyone. Thanks for running the thread OP!
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Jan 3, 2019 14:37
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