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 My journey into TOME began with a desire to find a classic roguelike that actually clicked with me, and I went through probably a dozen before finding this one. Boy did it ever click with me. It turned out the thing I was really looking for in a roguelike was the ability to make proper builds, to spend points in talent trees, and TOME absolutely showers you in talent trees and build choices. Between the unique, class-specific trees that define what you can do and what you're good at, and the more generic ones shared between class archetypes or found through play that amplify what you're already good at, the build variation in TOME is utterly mindboggling. Not to mention all of the racial choices you can make to add another layer of complexity on top of things. Want to be an ogre rogue who specializes in throwing poison daggers? Go for it. Want to be a skeleton berserker? Take your bones to the battlefield. Want to be a tiny psionic furry? Not sure why you would, but the choice is there. Add to this a host of difficulty options (some to make it easier, some to make it harder) along with a huge number of unlockables that cover races, classes, individual talent trees, and cosmetics, and there's an absolute ton to do and a million ways to approach it. Granted, the game isn't perfect: while the individual level layouts are randomized, the overworld isn't, and every character tends to go through the same places in more or less the same order. Also, it's not exactly pretty; there are definitely roguelikes that look a lot better than this one. Still, if you can get past the ugly appearance, there's an utterly colossal world and variety of characters waiting for you.  I played Wacraft III and Frozen Throne back when they released, but my time was largely spent on custom maps and multiplayer; I simply wasn't skilled enough at the campaign to get very far without cheats. Earlier this year, however, I discovered that they actually added a slightly easier difficulty at some point that turned to be more or less ideal for me, and I dove in. The base campaign was fun enough, but it was in the expansion that the game really came alive. The Frozen Throne is, without a doubt, the best RTS campaign ever made. Where the original campaign got a bit samey, the sheer variety of mission types in TFT is astounding. Additionally, the races aren't just carried over from the base game, but each get their own specific twist: instead of the Night Elves, you play as the Sentinels with their own specific units; instead of the Humans, you play as the Blood Elves with their own, and so on. Not to mention the brief uses of the Naga as nearly their own separate race with their own tech tree. TFT takes the hero-focused design of the base game and runs wild with it, with an enormous variety of ability-laden heroes and units. Every unit, every character, every hero is dripping with personality and individuality, and even on the easiest difficulty, massing a single type of unit will only get you so far. It encourages you to experiment, to try out different army compositions, to explore hero interactions again and again. Not to mention the enormous missions that reward exploration with sidequests and bonus items for your heroes to become even stronger. As I didn't play the Reforged edition, the game looks somewhat dated, but there's enough of a classic Warcraft nerd in me to appreciate the wonky proportions, the low-res textures, and the middling voice acting. The story, too, doesn't merit a ton of discussion, but the campaign is still filled with enough thrilling moments (Arthas and Anub'arak's journey through the underground, Maiev's escape from the Tomb of Sargeras, and of course the climactic battle between Arthas and Illidan) to keep me entertained throughout. I know I'm late to the party, but goddamn is TFT good.  Unlike the above, Chrono Cross is a game I've played before, and several times at that. I took the rerelease this year as an opportunity to play through it again, and while that rerelease isn't very good (plagued with constant slowdown and an ugly filter that you can thankfully disable) I still immensely enjoyed my time with it due to the strength of the game on its own. No, it isn't as tightly designed as Trigger. Yes, the accent filter is stupid. Yes, there are unnecessary characters. Beyond those caveats, however, is one of the best looking, best sounding, and best playing JRPGs I've ever experienced. The tropical archipelago of El Nido is a phenomenal setting, and the art direction brings it to life in an incredible way. Even those who malign the game can't help but admit that the soundtrack is stellar, supplying an often melancholy mood to what is really a melancholy game. Chrono Cross takes place in a world where awful things have already happened, are currently happening, and will happen again; while you don't grasp the true extent of the inevitability of death at the start of the game, every new revelation just drives home how utterly hosed you and all of existence are. People will say that the story is terrible, that it's an awful sequel to Trigger, that it's convoluted for convoluted's sake, and all of the above are wrong. The story of the game is born from a single question: what happened to Schala at the end of Chrono Trigger? Her fate, where she is, and what she's doing serve as the core of the game; extending from that centerpiece are the myriad threads that the game explores. There are just so many threads that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to arrange them into a proper timeline, but I would argue that that's largely the point. Chrono Cross is a game about the dissolution of time and identity, where people aren't who they seem to be, places exist where and when they shouldn't, and timelines stop and start in unnatural ways; is it any wonder that it's difficult to grasp the totality of all the moving parts? Worlds upon worlds and timelines upon timelines? And yet, through it all, you defy fate and inevitability and carve your own destiny into the timeline. Plus, Starky exists, so how can you really get mad at the game?  My husband has insisted throughout our entire relationship that I should play these games, and it was only last year that I finally gave in and started them. Turns out he was right and I should have played them way, way sooner. I'm currently on the fifth game, but it was the finale of the initial trilogy that holds a special place for me. Specifically, the final case of the third game, that serves as an absolute culmination of everything that they had been working toward. Character storylines that had been built up over three games and dozens of hours finally weave together in ways I never expected. Every major character, even the prosecution, end up coming together to solve a massive mystery that spanned the whole trilogy, and the final revelations left me absolutely stunned. Even beyond that final case, however, the games are just fantastic. Cleverly written and animated characters abound, mysteries unfold in entertaining if unrealistic ways, every rule of the court is broken at least twice. Ace Attorney is an absolutely delightful series full of delightful moments and characters, and I was utterly depressed to learn that the fourth game represented such a massive shift on that front. (it's coming back into its own, but I miss Maya so much!!!!) I'm sure people have gushed about these games a ton over the years, and now I totally understand why. Special shoutouts to Godot, who despite seeming like a boring rear end in a top hat in his introduction is one of my favorite characters of all time now.  Warframe is another game that I've played off and on for awhile, but it was only this year that the game really clicked with me. It is impenetrable, adding layer after layer of impossible to understand mechanics, with some of the most absurd grind I've encountered in a game, and yet for all of August I couldn't stop playing and clocked a couple hundred hours into it. Having people around I could constantly pepper with questions about this mechanic or that helped immensely, and even hundreds of hours in I still have to check the official wiki to figure poo poo out. None of that matters because the game is just so goddamn fun. A third-person shooter at its core, Digital Extremes have fine-tuned the movement and combat to absolute perfection. Your characters, the titular 'warframes', are commonly described by the community as 'space ninjas', and there's some truth to that in terms of the agility your frames possess. Double jumping, gliding, flipping, leaping all over the place, it's a frenetic but perfectly controllable experience. Swarms of deadly enemies can be taken down with an honestly staggering number of guns, melee weapons, and frame abilities, comboed together in increasingly complex and clever ways. The mission variety is ever-increasing with extremely frequent and comprehensive updates, and the sheer volume of Things To Do can certainly be overwhelming. Not to mention just how much you can do to continually eke out a percent of extra performance from your frame, and be rewarded for it through completion of increasingly difficult objectives. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention what may be the most surprisingly good aspect of the game: the story. It doesn't start out as anything special, and I didn't expect it really to grow beyond the most basic backdrop for killing thousands of enemies and vacuuming up loot. Somewhere around halfway through, however, things start to happen. Characters coalesce, events play out, and you start to realize there's a method to the madness. And, somewhere between thirty to fifty hours in depending on how focused you've been on progressing, you hit what is for my money one of the most incredible revelations in a video game, and you realize you've only just started. You mention That Moment to another Warframe player, and they'll nod in understanding, and you desperately wish you could tell people about it, but even talking around it spoils an event that deserves to be experienced organically.  I played Crypt of the Necrodancer when it released back in 2015, devoured it, fell in love, and then dropped it for a few years. Earlier this year, they released their second DLC Synchrony, and I picked it up again and goddamn if this still isn't one of the most fun games ever made. A rhythm-based roguelike with some incredible tunes, massive item and character variety, dripping charm from every sound and sprite, Necrodancer is a masterwork. I wouldn't have put it on my list just for that DLC, however. I discovered an additional difficulty mode, called Mystery Mode, and refused to play any other game until I clear a run. In Mystery Mode, every single item, monster, and object is replaced with a question mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6am0o28yk_0 This is a video from one of my failed attempts that I think gives a good example of how it plays out. You can only discover what items you find through experimentation, and you can only identify monsters through the way they move, certain sounds, and how much health they have. It turns the game upside down in an incredibly fun way, and clearing a Mystery Mode run is one of my all time proudest gaming achievements. I'd love to do it again but on a character that dies on missing a beat, but that's going to be tougher.  Two JRPGs I played this year that end with 3, and it was exceptionally difficult ranking them. I'm sure a lot of other people are going to talk about Xenoblade 3, so I won't go into too much detail. It's just a fantastic game with an incredibly fun core cast, generally satisfying (if a little bit repetitive) combat, a story that left me guessing for dozens of hours, and some incredibly beautiful vistas. I don't know how Monolith make such gorgeous environments, but they're amazing at it. I just had a great time the whole way through, collected all the bonus classes, did all the sidequests and generally just 100%d the game, which is pretty rare for me. I didn't want to put it down and I didn't even want it to end when the credits rolled. Top tier gaming.  This was the other JRPG, and it just edged out Xenoblade on the pure strength of its themes. I played the Persona series backwards starting with 5, and I utterly hated 4. Apart from the overall mystery, nothing about it appealed to me whatsoever, and I ended up just cheating through the immensely boring gameplay to see the end of the story. I was worried 3 would be a similar scenario, that the gameplay would be just so outdated that I would loathe playing it, but I could not have been more wrong. It doesn't have all the quality of life of 5 to be sure, and Tartarus wasn't really the most thrilling dungeon, but everything else about the game more than made up for those small shortcomings. Persona 3 chose its theme in death, and sticks to it every step of the way. Everything revolves around death from the first moment seeing people turn into coffins, shooting yourself in the head to summon demons, and into the final scenes of the game. Everything is about death, dying, and persisting in the face of that inevitability. Tack onto that a typically amazing Persona soundtrack, a compelling cast including a very, very good dog, and you have one of my all time favorite JRPGs. P5R edges it out for me overall but gently caress if 3FES wasn't a masterpiece.  Another game that I think will appear on a lot of lists and I don't think I need to talk too much about. It's Elden Ring, y'all. It's a Souls game brought to an open world, and it could hardly have been done better. Usually I find open worlds aimless and get bored (I still haven't played more than a couple hours of Breath of the Wild) but Elden Ring's world is massive but not empty and your goals open but not vague. You always know where you can go to continue progressing, but you're rewarded for exploring every nook and cranny with items, weapons, armor, and bosses. There is perhaps an argument to be made that there's too much content, that there is some overuse of the same boss in multiple places, but it never bothered me. Once I beat the game with my first character, I instantly rolled a new one to try out different things, and rare is the game that can get me to do that; rarer still is the game that can get me to do that a third time, but Elden Ring holds that honor. I can't wait for inevitable DLC to give me an excuse to dive back into this incredible world. The rusted anchor is the GOAT btw.  For most of the year, I assumed that Elden Ring would easily take my top spot, just due to its overwhelming quality and how much fun I had with it. Nothing could compare to that, right? Until a friend suggested a little game called Tactical Nexus to me, and I have since lost hundreds upon hundreds of hours to this game. I don't even know where to begin with describing it. Its steam page barely describes how the actual game plays, and you won't really understand unless you try it for yourself. At its heart I guess it's a puzzle game disguised as a series of RPGs. Every puzzle is a tower consisting of multiple floors covered with static enemies that don't move and act more as obstacles, and your task is to get to the end. You have health, attack, and defense, and combat happens automatically when you bump into an enemy, comparing your stats vs theirs to decide who wins and how much health you lose in the process. Thus, your health is the primary resource you spend on working through the tower to get items to heal you or boost your stats, but even that isn't as simple as it seems, as you can often find multipliers to how much experience you receive or how much health potions give you, so you're incentivized to explore, to fight as little as possible and lose as little health as you can until you collect those multipliers. On top of this is the scoring system, where you get a final score based on your health, your level, and your stats. High enough scores award you with medals that you can then spend in other towers to gain items from the start to give you additional stats and thus change your route through the tower, and even unlock additional floors that you couldn't ever get enough stats to access without those medals. Even when you grasp that much, every new batch of towers introduces some new mechanic, like digging tools that you get limited quantities of that can allow you to bypass enemies with clever usage, or consumable orbs that let you swap places with items or enemies or swap your attack and defense, and the list goes on. Tactical Nexus is one of the most maddeningly complex games I've ever encountered and I can't stop playing it. I'll do the same tower repeatedly, changing some little thing about my routing to try and eke out a slightly higher score to nudge me into the next medal tier, which can be quite an undertaking as some of these towers can take multiple hours to clear even once, even when you know where you're going. It's a black hole of time and I hate it and I can't stop playing. gently caress this piece of poo poo game. Don't play Tactical Nexus. Stay away. My list, for ease of reference 10. Tales of Maj'Eyal 9. Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne 8. Chrono Cross 7. Ace Attorney 3 6. Warframe 5. Crypt of the Necrodancer 4. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 3. Persona 3 FES 2. Elden Ring 1. Tactical Nexus
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Dec 12, 2022 07:30
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 17:44 |
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Venuz Patrol posted:5. Tactical Nexus cannot believe someone else put tacnex on their list. it's so good
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Dec 16, 2022 06:27
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Rarity posted:You guys Relax says there is a secret Rarity room. Someone please find it and tell me what mean things he said about me  secret room found.
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Dec 19, 2022 12:11
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morallyobjected posted:I will give it to the last one (Trials and Tribulations) because of that last case alone it’s a godlike case. absolutely perfect
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Dec 19, 2022 22:10
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ffx is one of the best games ever made so i'm incredibly glad to see it top a list in 2022
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Dec 31, 2022 03:39
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Help Im Alive posted:Should I assume that The Diofield Chronicle being on 0 lists means: it's bad its not very good
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Jan 4, 2023 18:26
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JollyBoyJohn posted:cant wait for the open beta of stormgate insanely hype for this. base building rts games need to come back
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Jan 5, 2023 04:35
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JollyBoyJohn posted:starcraft 2: hearts of the swarm and starcraft 2: legacy of the void yeah these ruled. great campaigns
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Jan 5, 2023 10:08
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dq11 is fantastic and everyone should play it
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Jan 7, 2023 20:02
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slay the spire ... is good
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Jan 7, 2023 20:08
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y7 was so loving good overall. especially once you get the ability to throw thumbtacks
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Jan 7, 2023 20:31
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Stux posted:boreizon snorebidden chore
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Jan 7, 2023 23:04
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pokemon scarlet ruled so hard. incredibly glad it scored higher than arceus, which did not rule
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Jan 7, 2023 23:07
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fridge corn posted:Is triangle strategy ever coming out on a real console??? Haha I'm kidding of course... unless...?? it's on pc
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Jan 7, 2023 23:22
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i'm playing through tristrat now and if i had played it earlier it definitely would have made my top 10. incredible game.
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Jan 7, 2023 23:24
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vampire survivors is fine but it's very very repetitive and way too easy
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Jan 7, 2023 23:44
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Axel Serenity posted:Looking good for 2023 GOTY Armored Core VI ac6 is going to own. but it's also the year of ff16.
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Jan 8, 2023 00:00
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 17:44 |
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I don’t know who tae is but shout-outs for being my gaming buddy with similar tastes
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Jan 9, 2023 03:10
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