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You can order them however you like, but there's some guidelines if you'd like your entries to be counted toward the final totals. If you don't care about that go wild, rank them toroidally even
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Dec 7, 2023 21:25
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I'm not putting Elden Ring in mine out of respect for the other games. I've never stopped playing it in fact I played 2 of my top 3 because of it lol If it had released at the end of the year instead of the beginning it would probably be on a lot more lists ToxicFrog posted:I mean, this is is why Void Rains is on my list every year. Fashion souls is the true endgame. You can dodge attacks to make up for having negative damage mitigation but you can never escape a hideous outfit
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Dec 8, 2023 03:47
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It's going to be high on my list later, but since we're talking about it now, the best Pokemon-style game I've played is Monster Sanctuary, and it's better than a lot of Pokemon entries if I'm being honest. The formula (3v3 but with a backup 3 ready to deploy if needed, with 90% emphasis on synergy rather than individual monsters) sounds great on paper, but what makes it fantastic is just how well it was pulled off with masterful balancing and no shortage of genuinely difficult fights to test you. Also metroidvania elements in the system where every mon has an overworld ability and most are related to traversal. Oh, and any monster you hatch to use hatches at your level so zero grind. Built in randomizer and challenge modes are well done too.
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Dec 10, 2023 17:59
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FireWorksWell posted:I put it up as #4 in my list, it's definitely my favorite battle system for the genre. Their next game seems to be following a similar system, too. Same, I went over everything with a fine-toothed comb on my first playthrough because I was just having such a great time, so I gave the randomizer a short stress test despite not having the energy for another full playthrough and was very pleased with how good a job they did with it. Their next game is going to be an instant buy just on the strength of wanting to see what a studio that pulled this off is up to. My final megapowerful team were a frog named Croaku, a shabby looking ensign lizard, and an adorable blob of ice, but I probably had 3+ more per slot I'd regularly swap in and out for variety or the various other synergies they'd have. Epic High Five fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Dec 10, 2023 |
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Dec 10, 2023 18:13
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HopperUK posted:I like Monster Sanctuary a lot but the party-based fighting, and the fact you aren't guaranteed a capture, makes it feel less Pokemon to me. I can see it, I mostly view it as some of the more interesting stuff about Pokemon PvP being implemented in a way that isn't quite so horrible and limiting to actually work with. As for the capture thing, yeah that's fair even with what feel like relatively good odds, but I think I've just got so much time under my belt in the old ones (I didn't play any of them between red/blue and Sword/Shield) that literally no alternative capture system can feel worse. Sure, it's not 100% but iirc the better you do the more likely you get an egg so there's some strategy, but mostly whatever you want spawns at a known location on the screen so you can just fight it directly. Way easier. Arceus is also on my list for reasons that have a lot of overlap. drat I loved that game for all its flaws, and I don't think I've ever done more desperate scrambling in a mainline Pokemon game than I did with the final fight, despite having what I considered to be a pretty powerful and comprehensive team.
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Dec 10, 2023 19:01
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Chained Echoes is so fuckin good, it's gonna be a top 3 for me, got a lot to say about it but "doesn't waste your time" is spot on, by the standards of the genre it maintains a furious pace because everybody tears rear end across the screen and you get more powerful by pushing forward or exploring, grinding isn't even a consideration
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Dec 14, 2023 08:58
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What a ridiculous year, I finished something like 33 games but for the purposes of keeping things somewhat reasonable I've trimmed it down to top 20, and upon realizing that any of 11-20 could be #11 and half could be top 10 I've decided to instead declare 11-20 a higher tier of honorable mention: Extremely Honorable Mentions (screenshots are my own except when I forgot to take them (often) or they're across too many devices for me to deal with it (also often)) 20: Elden Ring (PC, Series S)  (my current 100% co-op playthrough, join the LLJK and lljk multiplayer groups on PC and give Ser Frog a summon if you see me!) I’m still playing this, and I’ve still probably got more hours in it this year than any of the others on this list. However, in this year where so much incredible stuff came out I could not give it the top spot it still deserves, so I am settling for giving it the bottom spot, so it will be the first thing readers see. If we had actually gotten DLC this year it probably would've been #1, alas that will have to wait until next year. 19: Death's Gambit: Afterlife (Switch) (Sure you may be an unstoppable killing machine, but could you.....run a kitchen?!)  This apparently came out years ago in a pretty sorry state, and the Afterlife in the title refers to both a big continuation of the story, but an overhaul of much of what was bad before. I didn’t play the original, but this was a very fun game and best of all it had a great big dumb hammer that scaled its damage off of vitality. There has never been a more perfect weapon for me in any game I’ve ever played. 18: Brotato (Switch)  It’s Vampire Survivors, with much more actual variety in how your final build on a run looks, and it will run on a Switch. That’s all the pitch I needed, and it’s a very fun one to do a run or two when there’s some down time. It’s a bit too RNG heavy for my tastes but I haven’t unlocked everything, and it can afford it because even a dumpster fire of a build can make it to the end and stand a puncher’s chance. 17: Void Bastards (Switch)  Very odd game with comic book styling to its very DNA, and gameplay is like FTL if the ship combat was a DOOM level, lots of humor and the wackiness fits, had a blast playing this and ended up wishing there was more. All the weapons feel both very useful, very powerful, or both and scrabbling to glue random poo poo together to get them or get more of them never stops being funny. My favorite weapon ended up being a friendly robo-cat companion that "hugs" the first enemy it seems by releasing a bunch of cluster grenades. Some of these ships are very spooky and navigating them very tense. 16: Dredge (Switch)  It’s what I had hoped Cult of the Lamb would be. Had a good time with it, really liked it and how the scary stuff both wasn’t scary and the game didn’t seem to care if you were scared or not. You really can just put on your “FISH FEAR ME” hat and ignore all the spooky stuff, and I admire that. 15: Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (Switch)  This game wins the award for Biggest Overperformer. I had no idea what this strange beast was supposed to be, so image my surprise when it turns out to be an X-Com game with every edge sanded off, but in a good way. It is quite easy with a decent party composition and boy howdy are there a lot of ways you can build a party, but most importantly it stays interesting and getting perfect scores on all levels is hard enough to feel rewarding but not so hard as to be, well, how these things usually go in XCOM games. That said, I can’t imagine anybody getting a perfect score on the final boss that isn’t some kind of inhuman monster at the hardest in the genre. 14: Graveyard Keeper (Switch)  Adult Swim in its prime does Stardew. A really addictive formula here where you build up your graveyard for cash and church for the currency for a ton of stuff, both of which also get fed back into themselves. An absolutely incredible amount of content as well. If you give this a whirl, don’t repeat the terrible mistake I did – build up your zombie army ASAP and not just at the very end of the game, and get the waystone from the innkeeper before then as well. Anybody who has played it knows what a testament it is to the game itself that I liked it so much despite walking everywhere and having no automation. 13: Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (Switch)  A very strange game, best summarized as the most meticulous and detailed perfect rice growing simulator around (the original manual I’ve heard recommended contacting the Japanese ministry of agriculture), and since you’re playing as the Goddess of the harvest, how you grow your rice and what kind you grow make you more powerful in the other half of the game, which is a chaotic brawler wherein you mercilessly slaughter screen after screen of enemies with farming implements in a high speed orgy of destruction. The people who you are sharing exile with are interesting and throw in a lot of twists and turns. I’d sometimes find myself forgoing combat for an entire year just to constantly monitor disease and pest levels, that proper irrigation is in place for the phase of growth, and tweaking the twice daily fertilizer application to ensure what is needed is delivered in the morning where it will do the most. A very odd game but very good. The physical copy for the Switch even comes with a little booklet! 12: Pokemon Legends: Arceus (Switch)  I caught’em all when Red/Blue were new on the scene and retired on top until Sword and Shield pulled me back in. I didn’t play Scarlet/Violet because I just didn’t feel the compulsion, but I did pick up Arceus on the grounds that it was doing something very different. Well, it was, and it rocked. Pokemon are genuinely scary at times for the first time playing this series, and the final battle was actually extremely difficult, as were a few others which is very rare in a Pokemon game. It’s been mentioned before but I’m very excited to see if the pains in 8 and 9 were growing pains after all and 10 really revolutionizes the series. I also hope that TotK finally convinces studios to devote significant time to polish when, to pick an example entirely at random, your franchise is the most recognizable and profitable on THE PLANET EARTH. 11: Afterimage (Switch)  A game much higher up the list got me into metroidvanias and I played an awful lot of them this year. Afterimage sticks out not just for the extremely diverse array of weapons and combat options, but because even in such a short amount of time playing them its lush, extremely alive and varied settings stood out as a breath of fresh air. It's also an enormous game, probably the biggest metroidvania I've ever played, so it's good that stuff is fun to experiment with and the world is engaging. Performance could be a bit spotty on Switch, but only in the open world and especially with screens using parallax. It's playable but if you're put off by things getting herky jerky at times, PC is the best bet. !~~THE REAL DEAL TOP 10 LIST~~! 10: Kingdom: Two Crowns (Switch, Series S)  There’s no way I could describe this game that would make anybody believe it’s as compelling and fun to play as it is. Great for co-op too, you basically ride around on your horse or other mount and do the only thing you can do, which is pay people to do things. It’s a 3 button game including movement, but god help me if it isn't a blast keeping your people safe while expanding to within striking distance of enemy structures, as every night and with every structure destroyed things get progressively harder and harder and your larger kingdom becomes harder to defend both directly and because it takes you so much longer to traverse it. The difficulty is forgiving even on the insane difficulties, and recovery from losing a crown (game over, new dynasty begins) is exceptionally forgiving and even has a lot of upside. 9: Monster Sanctuary (Switch)  It’s a Pokemon Metroidvania that is both just plain fun and extremely well executed, and probably the most balanced game I’ve played, especially considering the fights are 3v3 from a pool of 6. No monster is OP on its own, nor did I find a single one that is bad, because it’s about team building first and foremost. One big way it is different from Pokemon is that it also gets fiendishly difficult in parts and has a ton of very difficult optional trainer fights. I didn’t have to wonder if my final team (Spectral Frog named Croaku, a lizard with a spear and armor, and an adorable ice blob) was as strong as I thought it was and that I had actually done a great job. I knew all that was true because I pulled that team through hell and back and made it back alive. 8: Dave the Diver (PC)  Couldn’t get enough of this game, can’t wait to return to it eventually. Perfect humor, great mechanics, I just loved it from start to finish. 7: A Space for the Unbound (Switch)  It’s not an uncommon thought that I may have a heart of stone, but this one did get me near the end so there’s warmth there yet. A VN about 90’s Indonesia with a big serving of slice of life that very gradually becomes something from an combloc sci-fi novella. The visuals are perfect for what it is, and, well, I really dislike what I usually refer to as “magical high schooler bullshit” and I still loved this game despite it being (starting out as at least) literally that. Very good Switch game. 6: Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights (Switch)  This was an odd one for me for the first half of the game, because all I’d ever known about this game was that most people who played it didn’t like it that much. My shock came from the fact that it was in fact extremely good. Hell the first real deal spirit they gave me was the big dumb hammer guy I would go on to use for the entire game, the map doesn’t track to the in game world very well BUT it tells you when you’ve found all the secrets in a room which is worth any amount of flowchart look. This game had one of my favorite boss fights of all time (Julius, that is the only one in a 2D game that really felt like I was fighting one of From’s best bosses, boss theme included.) Maybe it had a rough launch or something, but this game is GREAT. 5: Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin (PC)  “Worst Souls game, 9/10” Dark Souls 2 is a lesson in why developers always put all the good stuff at the start and leave the ending being as good to hope and prayer, because when they don't do that they get a Dark Souls 2. This game has probably the worst start for the genre you could make – all the bad parts of the new stuff are all front and center, and none of the good stuff shows up until midgame. There’s about 50% too many enemies and the bosses are frankly boring and way too easy. Your character within these levels of gank rooms moves like molasses and has horrible iframes on dodges until you invest 30 levels into ATT and/or ADP. Every interesting weapon requires midgame levels of stats and way too much dex. BUT once you get past that, the game is a lot better. A LOT better. Genuinely interesting and weird level design even if you have to make a point of not thinking about how they all fit together, the ADP hurdle is crossed quickly because the game just loads you down with levels and souls such that you’ll be finishing this at a higher level than you would a completionist Elden Ring playthrough, and this also means fun builds because the soft caps are pretty hard so you’re incentivized to branch out if you aren’t a caster or powerstancer. Probably my most controversial take is that the usual wisdom – the DLC makes the base game worth it – is wrong. The back half of the game is legit great and this really stands out because this was very much not the case with DS1, and while the Iron King DLC is probably my favorite DLC, Sunken was about as good as the best parts of the base game and Ivory King was frankly worse in most regards. The Ivory King fight itself though was fantastic, easy if you’ve got a complete build by then but it’s basically a DOOM arena and kicks rear end. Probably my most controversial take is that the Outskirts aren't that bad. Iron Passage is truly hell, a zone that is the pinnacle of making an area infuriating to even step foot in much less traverse. Outskirts is just a matter of killing a few reindeer and then two of a boss that still manages to only be about as hard as Red Wolf of Radagon. It is a test of patience, and a test of if you're using a weapon that is good at fighting reindeer, and a test of if you have Warmth and 100 lifegems, but it's tivially easy to solve. Not so with the run-up to Blue Smelty which has you coming AND going. 4: Chained Echoes (Switch)  This game blew me away, the first JRPG I’ve played since the original FFVII that blew me away and kept me hooked to the end. There’s a lot to be said about the overdrive system and sheer variety of options to build your party, but I think the biggest thing is how much QoL there is. Your characters move like greased lightning everywhere they go and grow more powerful not from grinding, but from progressing the story and killing bosses while exploring. Fast travel is one of the first things you get and is very fair. Combat is balanced (assuming you haven't selected the hard modes which are fiendishly difficult) and upgrading weapons is easy and anything you do to them beyond that is pure upside. The story is great and the characters even better, and the OST is simply incredible. Any other year this would be vying for first place. This game is just a real pleasure to play, like taking the aircraft carrier that is the genre standard and somehow making it as sleek and fast as a destroyer, with a great story and even better characters. 3: Hollow Knight (Switch)  I picked this up at the beginning of the year after bouncing off it multiple times in the past, most recently on a run where I ended up fighting a really annoying midgame boss (Brooding Mawlek) as like my 2nd or 3rd by freak chance and giving up in frustration. This time I explored more and found the intended route, and actually got to feel absorbed by this world, and boy howdy did I suddenly get the praise for this game. Charming, hard but fair, many of my favorite boss fights in any 2D game, and a really incredibly well made world. So much of this game is empty, thoughtful, and sad, something that many games striving to make an eerie and mournful setting forget in favor of making every screen a platforming or combat challenge. The dream nail grave fights were some of my favorite, because the fights were frequently fantastic but mostly because the sad little wistful bits of world building that was their stories, your real reward for felling them, became the most touching parts of the game for me. Now ghostly voices recounting what the collapse you are wandering the ruins of was for people living through it. A warrior monk who has become infected and is succumbing to violent frenzy is killed, with clarity of mind enough left to know he is being killed but not know why until the truly final act. A funny grub and proud knight both desperately seeking the security of the respect of their King but finding themselves adrift and seeking anything at all when he goes missing as plague ravages the land. A little grub that harnesses his fear and becomes a giant warrior styled after a king, your reward being following him into the afterlife to confirm that even if he had been as powerful as he saw himself as, it wouldn't have been enough. And who could forget Gorb, who needs no introduction. Every Metroidvania on this list and quite a few others I played because this finally opened up the whole genre to me. 2: Dark Souls 3 (PC) https://i.imgur.com/WBe3my9.mp4 This year I decided I was going to complete the catalogue of Souls games after going from DS1 straight to 500 hours of Elden Ring. The first of these was 3 and it wasn’t too long before I understood why it is still the favorite of so many. The boss fights are incredible, with even the easy ones being an incredible spectacle with a badass theme. Combat and movement felt really good, and best of all I got a big stupid hammer really early that did frostbite as well. What really rocketed this up to 2nd place though was the setting. It was really good already and then you get to the eerie magical city and it’s just another level. Then comes the big reveal after that, and holy poo poo what a reveal, and then the grim deathmarch begins where you are reminded of the cycle of these things in a very visceral way, walking through a graveyard you remember being alive past the bodies of your old friends. You’ve now become what you were before, a wanderer plundering ruins and harnessing old dead mythologies from past ages the same as the forces you now battle are doing, only now you’re plundering the ruins of something familiar and the mood is very different. It is this heavy shroud you carry through the rest of the game, and all that follows fits neatly underneath, like chapter after chapter being added to a book until you reach the page that is absolutely the final one. Or is it? Ashes felt very short but the Friede fight was just incredible. Solo and with a greathammer it was a real dance that took me probably 20 tries to finally come out on top. Ringed City was probably the best ending to the series there could’ve been, one where they managed to make a FUN dragon fight and a final boss that is an all-timer even if he’s maybe a bit too easy if you aren’t easily flustered by chip damage and have a weapon with a lot of stagger. 1: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch) (Judge Dredd of the Hyrule Fashion Police executing his duty)  To be entirely truthful, half of my top 10 could’ve been here, but TotK took it on points because it did a whole bunch of really wild poo poo with the formula and, thanks to also getting a year dedicated to just polish, it all worked incredibly well. The story was passable, and literally every complaint I had about BotW was not just fixed, but was elevated to one of my favorite things about the game. The main bosses are interesting and varied, fusion made weapon durability really great actually, and building never stopped being fun. The story was great but the way it was told left a lot to be desired to say the least. I’m actually a fan of the disjointed time thing, but every cutscene after every boss being the same and the companions being totally useless aside from Tulin because he stays out of your way pulled it down a lot. My first playthrough of this was as long as my first for Elden Ring, and the final fight was just insanely cool. TotK was just a real achievement in a lot of ways, it totally consumed me for a month in a way that almost nothing out there can anymore. Top ten cheat sheet: 1) TotK 2) Dark Souls 3 3) Hollow Knight 4) Chained Echoes 5) Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin 6) Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights 7) A Space for the Unbound 8) Dave the Diver 9) Monster Sanctuary 10) Kingdom: Two Crowns
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Dec 30, 2023 20:27
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FireWorksWell posted:Yeah I have to say this might be my favorite in the genre. Would have put it in over Bloodstained on my list but it's a game I picked up early this month. Gorgeous, fluid movement and I really gelled with the combat to the point I enjoyed brute forcing bosses I was underleveled for. I've seen a lot worse but yeah the translation can be inconsistent at parts. I've been trying to play whatever games come across my radar out of China lately because they're reliably deeply weird or a breath of fresh air in whatever genre you find it, but reliable translation is really lacking. Warm Snow is on my list next but wasn't going to make it on this year's list, and apparently it got a DLC? "It's like Hades" was all it took Luckily for Afterimage the world and combat can carry any story
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Dec 30, 2023 21:36
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Regy Rusty posted:And they're making him start off next year with Gollum Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
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Dec 30, 2023 22:36
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It's been a good year for Hollow Knight finally clicking for goons. I credit the inordinate amount of Dark Souls and Elden Ring I played between my first attempts and my most recent. From taught me that I didn't actually dislike a whole genre, I just dislike tediously overlong Cinematic Experiences, and once I realized Hollow Knight had a lot of the same DNA both it and a whole new genre was open to me (not because I dislike MVs I had just never really played any) HK is also extremely great to just jump back into since it starts with all the stuff you like about the end game, minus movement skills which gives you something to do. The true final boss is absolutely worth going back to or doing another playthrough for later. Such a fantastic boss, you'll never not feel incredible once you finally get it down.
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Dec 31, 2023 02:43
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Disco for sure, to this day I still think about it all the time. BG3 discourse died down pretty quick after the period between the "it's a horny game too folks" teaser and a bit after release when everybody was getting to Act 3 whereas it felt like Disco chatter was going furious so far into the next year that it ranked top 5? again. I think they're too different to fairly compare tho, Disco's whole thing was removing the combat entirely and narrowing the focus on soft, human, and dark stuff, as well as giving you control of someone who is a complete mess, to allow a very unique and personal experience. There's no power there, there's no fantasy. BG3 is all combat packed and so huge a scope that a playthrough is 100+ hours, it's going to be some time before there's a better CRPG and if there is it's going to be an indie thing because BG3 was what Larian has been building up to for its whole existence. It's comparing the pinnacle of an existing genre with the creation and perfection of a new one all in one go, where do you even start? Also Disco was only $40 For a pithy response tho, goons would pick Disco because BG3 is 5E
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Jan 3, 2024 00:24
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I think just in general there's going to be less of a gulf in votes between the top 5 especially than we're used to seeing
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Jan 12, 2024 23:20
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The survival horror aspect is deeply unappealing to me and I thought the flashlight mechanic was dumb in 1, but on the other hand literally nobody I know who gushes about it talks about that stuff at all so there's clearly something else going on. That stuff seems like a clear sideshow to what people actually find appealing about the game. I'll try it eventually I think but not at full price
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Jan 12, 2024 23:33
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Veeg should play Caves of Qud in anticipation of it running away with #1 this year with its 1.0 launch
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Jan 13, 2024 17:15
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OOOOOOOHHHHH, ELDEN RING
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Jan 13, 2024 17:16
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You're going to hear this about 90% of the games on this list Veeg but you really do need to fast track Disco to the top of the backlog
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Jan 13, 2024 17:28
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Wahoo!
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Jan 13, 2024 17:33
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Jerusalem posted:Great to see it so high but man I wish Hi-Fi Rush had cracked the Top 10, it was such a pleasant surprise of a game. Think about it this way instead - Hi-Fi Rush scored higher than both Elden Ring and Disco Elysium
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Jan 13, 2024 18:27
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We need more devs doing totally wacky poo poo like that, not less, imho edit - we also need more devs making competent Soulslikes
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Jan 14, 2024 03:18
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My big gaming goal this year was just to finally play Sekiro, and I've already done that, so I guess next up is Bloodborne to finish out a complete playthrough of all Soulskirobornering games, but unfortunately it's a bit of a pain in the rear end to play that one. Also I just want to keep playing Sekiro even though I'm rapidly running out of things to do that isn't getting the Bad Ending where I have to do Terrible Things Otherwise I'm just in the Caves of Qud 1.0 waiting room with like 4 other people.
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Jan 16, 2024 19:30
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Shooga have you ever played a Zachtronics game
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Jan 17, 2024 01:27
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ShoogaSlim posted:never heard of that. should i? Someone else will have to confirm I'm correct or flame me for being wrong, as I only play cozy or Souls games anymore and don't have the brains for them, but as I understand it they are meticulously crafted games for the narrowest possible audience of people who make elaborate spreadsheets for no reason beyond the love of the game From that list tho I recommend Steamworld Dig and its sequel, good clean bite sized fun
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Jan 17, 2024 01:35
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One of my recs was what I just finished and it's gonna be a contender for my GOTY lol (sekiro) Psychonauts 2 never was able to get its hooks in me and Neon White flips between too anime and too speedrunny. The other two I've already beaten tho, so quite accurate. ShakeZula posted:I'd be interested in trying both Sekiro and Elden Ring for the right price, but sadly Tokyo Mirage Sessions appears to be exclusive to platforms that I don't own Sekiro is the harder of the two by a good margin, at least starting out, but I think you'd enjoy that more. It's lean and mean with a good story that isn't hidden in item descriptions, whereas Elden Ring is a 15 course dinner followed by dessert buffet
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Jan 17, 2024 04:31
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 10:16 |
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Vidmeo gorms
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Jan 18, 2024 03:01
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