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It's time for the best thread of the year every year. I included games that I rated a 3.5 or higher out of 5.0, acknowledging that games underneath that score are closer to skippable than not in most cases. 47. This Way Madness Lies (3.5/5) 46. Ghost Song (3.5/5) 45. Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series (3.5/5) 44. Vision Soft Reset (3.5/5) 43. Patrick's Parabox (3.5/5) 42. Yakuza Kiwami (3.5/5) 41. Videoverse (3.5/5) 40. Picross DS (3.5/5) 39. The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (3.5/5) 38. Returnal (3.5/5) 37. Melatonin (3.5 /5) 36. Detective Grimoire (3.5/5) 35. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayer (3.5/5) 34. Axiom Verge 2 (3.5/5) It seems like AV2 received less positive reviews than the original Axiom Verge due to significant changes in the gameplay. The first game called back to the original Metroid’s lonely and tense atmosphere, placed combat first, and introduced glitches as a power-up function. I didn’t have much fun with AV1 but a plenty others did. Axiom Verge 2 comes along years later with lackluster critical acclaim and why play a worse version of a game I already didn’t like? I took the chance and found a great Metroidvania that emphasized exploration over combat and replaced the dark laboratories with bright outdoor environments. Your player’s hacking abilities and cross-over play with a drone expand the exploration elements even further, driving you to consider the environment carefully instead of blasting through. To me, that incremental study and discovery of the world map is the best part of Metroidvanias and it’s exactly what Axiom Verge 2 emphasizes first. Just remember that it’s a significant departure from AV1 and don’t hold your evaluation against expectations. 33. Lies of P (3.5/5) 32. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked (3.5/5) 31. Slay the Princess (3.5/5) 30. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (3.5/5) 29. Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane (3.5/5) 28. COCOON (3.5/5) 27. Little Nightmares 2 (3.5/5) 26. A Space for the Unbound (3.5/5) 25. Persona 5 Tactica (3.5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEUqLL8J4gI Here's a weird question: Is Persona 4 and 5 defined by the group of friends that come together to solve problems or is it more about the troubled people who get their problems solved? If you answer the second, have I got the game for you. Persona 5 Tactica is a little like viewing Futaba's mind palace from Persona 5 taking Futaba's perspective. The Phantom Thieves are here on contractual obligation but it's not their story or character development. It's the story of two other people who take a little too long to reach their interesting story beats. You can see a odd parallel to those 90's/00's romantic comedy movies like Garden State or 500 Days of Summer. Toshiro spends an enormous amount of the game as "boring man acts boring" while Erina essentially plays the role of manic pixie dream girl.. Is the gameplay good? Well, it has a fun all-out mechanic that promotes good strategic maneuvering but lacks any other ideas. It's a big step behind Mario + Rabbids, the tactical spin-off where chaos reigns in the best way possible, but is a serviceable tactical RPG otherwise. It's not a bad game, but you can see why people hope there isn't another spin-off between this and Persona 6. 24. Orbo's Odyssey (3.5/5) If they just made the rocketing bullet spin thingy easier to control with the camera controls, this would've been higher on my list. A great example of a small goofy idea leveraged well for a small goofy game. 23. Echo (4/5) 22. Metroid Prime 2: Echos (4/5) 21. Hi-Fi Rush (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6HAVF_Yb9M Some people said this about Baldur's Gate 3 in this thread but I think it applies to my experience with Hi-Fi Rush: Do you ever play a game that you know is the perfect type of a specific game, but it still doesn't really connect with you? I don't normally enjoy hack-n-slash games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, but here's a version with great music, a utter devotion to rhythm-based gameplay/world/characters, beautiful cel-shaded graphics, and an over-arching sense of genuine fun. But it's a hack-n-slash, it's repetitive battle arenas that fatigue my interest, It's letter grades for your battles that never help the experience, it's still not my thing despite offering so many aspects that I love. But it might be truly yours. 20. Venba (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyPQ8Xb35k As good of an indie cooking game that you could ask for, keeping the cooking gameplay always story-relevant while not lasting long enough for the gameplay to become stale (~2 hours to beat). I had the odd experience getting stuck on a level because I fundamentally disagree when garlic should be added to a certain dish. 19. Tangle Tower (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncbCn2HXbnQ&t=240s 18. Citizen Sleeper (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNKU1PevYcg I love a good story, especially when it carries such a beautiful theme: Despite how rough the world can be, the people can be kind to each other. However, the game’s content was surprisingly bare given the comparisons to other games with adored & reactive writing. Each day’s activities are limited based on your dice rolls but there are no difficult choices when tasks are simple to resolve and time limitations are unlikely to overlap. Citizen Sleeper is a significant improvement over the developer's previous game, In Other Waters, but there's still room between CS and the top-tier of comparable games. Citizen Sleeper 2 was recently announced and I'm looking forward to how the sequel builds on this success. 17. Diablo 4 (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKKNFSpfUok For context, I just play the story of Diablo 4 and don't get involved in the seasons or long-term grind. I was perfectly happy with the story and gameplay as it sits today, a satisfying click-click-click action RPG where my necromancer throws an undead army at hellish monsters. 16. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKyDDmkgkeY 15. Cassette Beasts (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF2LtqVBWe0 Clear your throat, tap on the microphone, and with deadpan tone, say "Pokemon but different". Monster collection games all fall in the shadow of Pokemon and Cassette Beasts is no different. You can view the game as a grab-bag of someone's ideal combination of Pokemon concepts: You primarily level up your trainer rather than your monsters, allowing more experimentation between parties instead of locking yourself into whichever Pokemon has the highest level. Type advantages take more interest in bizarre interactions, like melting a plastic monster with a fire attack to produce noxious fumes. It's all a chance to learn fun type interactions from scratch, and how many years ago could you say the same about Pokemon? But the main Pokemon comparison to acknowledge is how both games treat you, the player. In Pokemon, the player character is a kid who's always lived in the Pokemon world but recognizes that the player could be any age. Everyone in Pokemon has always lived in simple moral terms. Cassette Beasts throws you into the world Link's Awakening style, washed ashore to an unfamiliar land, with the open fact that this is an alternate universe and you're likely an adult. You don't encounter classmates so much as twenty-somethings who found their life's calling but still feel self-conscious about their weird hobbies. Those little changes makes all the difference. Cassette Beasts knows you and every other NPC wants to leave this little world of monsters but, considering the real life that you leave behind to play this game, why don't you take your time here where things are simple? Yes, the tone is more grown-up and archangels and dungeons are scary, but this is a story told inside a nostalgic-imbued magic circle, where you can make friends by exchanging first names, join a rangers core that helps others, defeat enemies with your knowledge of type advantages, and enjoy a soundtrack that remains pleasant, comforting, and warm. Cassette Beasts is Pokemon realized as an adult's escapist fantasy. Just like the song playing in the cafe says: It's okay to be uncertain cause I'm certain it's fine to be floating here for a while. 14. Tales from Off-Peak City (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yVs2E4aldg&t=604s The perfect Cosmo D game would resemble a super-packed version of Tales from Off-Peak City but the game lacks the same volume of self-directed interactions that make Betrayal and Norwood such endless thrills. For example, delivering pizzas to apartments sets up a great series of jokes but the pizza baking becomes tedious as the same long joke plays out multiple times. I also encountered some game-breaking bugs, one of which occurred right at the ending sequence. It’s still a fantastic game worth your time but I’d recommend playing it third of the three Cosmo D games I’ve tried so far. 13. Live A Live (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSwEXTR1FIg&t=11s 12. Rain Code (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPkw6sw3LOk After a half-dozen games and anime series, The Danganronpa team walked away from their desks to figure out what new adventure they would do next. They came back to something new: In Rain Code, unlike Danganronpa, you play as a teen boy detective investigating a series of murder-mysteries starring a cast of colorful & extreme personalities inside a closed-off environment, where a deeper earth-shattering secret explains the bizarre status quo. At the end of each case, you insert pictures of the crime in a manga-esq comic to prove you understand the event in full. No, wait, hold on. Unlike any other high-ranking game on my list, you play as a high school-aged boy who discovers secret superpowers soon after moving to a city corrupted by the local police, diving into stylish-neon-bright mind palaces shaped by the distorted desires of a criminal culprit, where finding the secret at the end tears down the mind palace effectively ends the culprit’s lives. You are joined throughout the game by a cute talking companion that bystanders don’t hear and offers expert opinions about the mind palaces. Xanthe Huynh voices the English dub of a sheltered rich girl in your party and the soundtrack is a banger. No, wait, hold on. Let me jump to the most important point of this review: Danganronpa fans should play this and you will be satisfied if that sounds like you. I rate it just under the three main DR games for reasons I’ll get into but Rain Code is not nearly enough to disappoint a longtime fan. For all the detective games out there, nothing quite hits the same level of goofy-fun entertainment as DR or this spiritual successor. It’s as if other mystery games want to give you a case while Rain Code / Danganronpa wants to give you memorable cartoon characters who, by the way, are involved in murder mysteries. I love it. I read all the optional side conversations, bought the DLC, and read the flavor text. Give this team all the credit deserved for writing characters and scenes that are legitimately fun because god knows how many games have no interest to be interesting. Seth Burroughs sums it up for me: what a dumb idea for a character who I loved every time he appeared. Danganronpa starts with a large collection of characters, then widdles the numbers down over time as murders and executions take place. Rain Code silo’s their cases with a new batch of suspects and locations each time. This change sounds refreshing, isn't that Ace Attorney in a nutshell?, but you lose a ton of interaction time with these characters. Danganronpa’s set-up is a great way to build strong connections with characters as you become familiar with their quirks and tendencies over hours of multiple cases. Rain Code keeps the fun characters going but how invested could you possibly be with the third or fourth crowd of a half-dozen suspects, each with a bare minimum screen time? You also have to groan at some of these minigames and scenes for fan service: there's no way you can let someone watch you play if a certain barrel minigame is expected to show up. Well, there’s one major exception with Shinigami, the perpetual comic relief of the story. There’s lots of reviewers who find her annoying, and I can see why with her constant one-liners over the course of 40-50 hours. But you know what? I think the bigger problem is with Yuma, our antenna-haired main character, and the lagging buddy-cop duo. Just like Danganronpa, we play as a player-insert character with no personality, but Rain Code makes Yuma carry a large number of scenes himself, as if he was interesting enough as an individual and not a bland straight-man. It’s no surprise that Shinigami has the frantic try-hard energy of two characters when her character has to compensate for Yuma. Rain Code made a bold move to a fully-3D open world on the Switch’s aging hardware, away from the stylized 2D sprites in the 3D world of Danganronpa. The good news is that the trademark character art translates to 3D perfectly in Rain Code. The downside is the framerate, which manages to slow down speaking animations enough to occasionally de-sync from the audio tracks. 11. Blasphemous 2 (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmNVWkYoHl8 Blasphemous was an unpolished diamond in the Metroidvania genre that was weird and strange enough to still be memorable, even if you found the platforming too difficult or the quests too obscure. For the sequel, Blasphemous 2 refines the formula to include Metroidvania’s tried-and-true successes. The platforming is still difficult but ground spikes no longer insta-kill you. You have three weapons to select that each offer combat customization and special movement abilities. When the game starts with a godly character introducing five bosses you must defeat, the game may as well sigh and say “I’m a metroidvania, you know the deal”. But is it still weird enough? You’ll still encounter some disturbing imagery but I don’t think this sequel matches the original game’s dedication to the Spanish catholic imagery and atmosphere. There’s no boss here quite like Exposito or Melquiades. The game also pushes up it's boss difficulty in unfortunate spikes: one boss near the end is already infamous as an absurdly hard fight, far too punishing and quick. Maybe Blasphemous 2 is best summed up by the changes in cutscenes: The crude and janky pixel-art cutscenes of the first game are replaced by smoothly-animated scenes that are better quality in every way. But I remember the first game's opening and brutal cutscene, where the pentiment one fills his hat with blood from the first boss, far more than the cleanly-tweened scenes of the sequel. 10. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M718nE96mw Years ago, I tried playing Jet Set Radio and felt immensely disappointed. My years of playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater may have set too high of a bar for action sport games and I wasn't receptive to the gameplay JSR offered in it's place. So, back it went to my collection of games that may have been critically acclaimed at one point but didn't age well. Fast forward to this year when one of the goofiest game names crosses my path: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Just say it out loud, you hope no one is around to hear you say something so explicitly not cool in 2023. But in the world of this game, it's the coolest thing ever. So cool. And with the high review scores and discounted price, why not give it a try? Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a love letter to JSF and maybe a little annoyance that no game truly captured the spirit of JSR/JSRF in the modern era. The graphics and OST carry the clean futurism of JSR but with all the modern touches and experience possible: the world is enourmous and all the unsubtle characters are wonderfully realized. But most importantly, it's absurdly fun to play. Open levels of handrails, stairsets, pedestrians, and rival gangs who battle via breakdancing all contribute to this bizarre but cohesive world. The makers wanted an evolution to the JSR formula and they reached it. I still bristle a bit at the trick system that rewards leaning into corners during grinds more than actual tricks but it rewards you for your environmental knowledge. Lots of games want to be unambiguously fun but Bomb Rush Cyberfunk hits the mark over and over again with aplomb. 9. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (4/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIFyjc3PbSU I bought Mario Maker 2 a few years ago with a sad bit of realization: this must be Nintendo tapping out on Mario 2D game designs. This must be the developer throwing their hands up and admitting there's not much else to explore for our favorite jumping plumber in 2D so why don't you build these games yourself? You can spend a year on a desert island with all the content generated from Mario Maker 1 alone, and then Mario Maker 2 comes out with a sizable number of additional set pieces and gimmicks, and then what? Are we looking into the void of boring Mario 2D games, retreading the same ground from here on out? Wonder shows that the team still has their 2D levels down to a science but, more importantly, has enough juice left in the tank to deliver a fresh twist per level like rhythm games, body transformations, or escape sequences. It's to the game's credit that you look forward to these moments and seek them out, they're always worthwhile. A data scientist will be able to inform me why they levels aren't as ideal as past games but, as a tired gamer, I think it's the most memorable side-scrolling Mario since the early days of Mario 3 and World, and that's an unbelievable accomplishment to reach all these decades later. 8. Perfect Tides (4.5/5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHOkNZEKpys When I have a kid of my own, I no longer have to brace myself for the question “What was high school like in your day?”. I can now throw a copy of Perfect Tides at them and let them experience it. Actually, let’s not do that. They don’t need to know all the gory details. I’ve never seen a game that nails a teenager’s mind as well. Mara’s attempts to socialize lands so flat and so often. The internal discouraging monologues, willingness to go along with people she perceives as authoritative, erupting emotional swings that she doesn’t truly mean…they feel so real. Perfect Tides understands that Mara and the others lack life experiences and make horrible assumptions. They don’t have a baseline for what romance is, the right thing to say at the moment with other people in mind, and how to keep their social connections healthy and happy. They’re still in the process of figuring out how to live their lives, and too many teens and adults found their answer in selfishness or cruelty. Mara in Perfect Tides accurately parallels a gender-swap of my own experiences growing up in the early 00’s: watching TRL on MTV, posting online to supplement fading real-life social connections, and fighting for the agency of adulthood with my family. Hell, I even wrote and uploaded fanfiction like Mara. It’s online, somewhere, the worst Simpsons episode in the world written by yours truly in seventh grade. I tried looking for it online just now and couldn’t find it, but it’s out there alive, I know it. The parallels keep going: did anyone see that Perfect Tide’s developer/writer came back to the SA Forums to answer a few questions about the game…in which Mara posts on an online forum that loses popularity but the surviving users age out of their edgy teen angst? Sounds familiar. And best of all, there’s a Perfect Tides 2 coming out in the near future! Where Mara moves to New York City after high school…just like I did all these years ago. Huh. If Mara sublets half of a one-bedroom in the East Village, I'm checking if my phone is tapped. With this much glowing praise, I do need to caution that the game remains an old school Point-n-Click adventure. You will often feel lost, confused about next steps, surprised that a puzzle exists, and if a certain need is even answerable by your character. Some next steps are intuitive while others, especially the side quests, are frustratingly time sensitive or difficult to parse. It’s annoying to learn about the garden in the Fall and plant seeds, only to see the winter freeze the ground in the next time skip. I played this game with a guide which I feel is the only way to play old school PnCs happily. PS: Perfect Tides would make a good double-feature with the Kate Beaton book released earlier this year "Ducks". Both stories follow women through difficult coming-of-age stories, one during high school and one during post-college employment. The fact that both authors became known for webcomics doesn't capture just how linked, or universal, these painful experiences can be. 7. Norwood Suite (4.5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXpYP1oQvRA The first Cosmo D game I played was Betrayal At Club Low last year and I immediately fell in love with the bizarre experience. I ranked it higher than other classics that year such as Pentiment, TUNIC, and NORCO. Unbeknownst to me, Betrayal was the fourth release in a series of very similar games that share the same graphics, characters, and bizarre universe. Cosmo D found a vibe and they’re sticking with it. Norwood Suite exchanges the dice rolls of Betrayal for inventory fetch quests. This removes the game’s tension, there’s no “failure” in Norwood Suite, but the emphasis on exploration gives more opportunities for hilariously bizarre guest interactions and environment secrets. It feels like exploring a Dishonored level with all the secret passages and side quests waiting for you to discover. I can’t say enough great things about the sound and music of this game. People talk in Banjo-Kazooie-esq blips of a central instrument that blends together in beautiful ways. Go jump around in that YouTube video in this entry, I challenge you to find one minute of mediocre music in that whole soundtrack. Although I still prefer Betrayal at Club Low among the Cosmo D games, any fan should immediately play Norwood Suite right afterwards. 6. Misericorde Volume 1 (4.5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va2t-_pXSCE Everyone wondered what new trend would follow Pirates, Zombies, Superheroes, and now we have our answer: Anchoresses. We will look back on Pentiment as the first Iron Man movie of the modern era, the start of our obsession with nuns locked in sealed rooms. Misericorde is the Thor, the one that broadens our Enough of that and onto the visual novel. Mystery VNs are popular but Misericorde separates itself with memorable characters, brooding black-and-white visuals, and an absolutely beautiful Trip-Hop soundtrack. So many VNs place a first-person perspective of someone with no personality and an equally-uninteresting tone, but Misericorde may have one the best VN narrators in Sister Hedwig: naive and frustrated at her new circumstances, yet spiritually devoted to the point of friction. If you ever write any fiction, please take this lesson to heart and write a narrator who's flawed and shares an interesting perspective. It's like a cheat code on making text fun to read and Misericorde weaves a fantastic tension between Hedwig's honest reactions and her appointed need for deductive reasoning. Although we don’t know how the story ends, Volume 2 will come out soon, you have to take a jump at stories and characters this promising. It's not that I don't like the first scene or the bonus scene found in the backgrounds tab after beating the game, but I think I have too good of an theory about the underlying conspiracy and fear what supernatural sprinkles are coming our way. 5. Pizza Tower (4.5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gGq0FoOFWg The following was posted in the last GOTY thread as a reply to my list and I cherish it and also do you even know what you unleashed: Escobarbarian posted:Wario Land II is an amazing game. There is a platformer called Pizza Tower coming out early 2023 which is hugely Wario Land-inspired and looks sick Everything in the game is great but more importantly, there’s nothing in this game that’s normal. The graphics are the initial insanity, Ren & Stimpy if it was drawn in MS Paint with that Nickelodeon art style that believes nothing is funnier than a cow falling on your school’s principal. Peppino is insane, the enemies and bosses are insane, the levels are insane, the overworld is insane, seeing Peppino in a TV within your UI is insane, the sound effects are insane, and your movement tech is insane. Wario Land games feel like a crazy character making their way through a normal world. Pizza Tower feels like a crazy character in an equally crazy world, so players need to act crazy to be normal. That means making Peppino sprint and shinespark (yes, the Metroid shinespark) like a charging bull through levels that reward movement comprehension and memorization. I can’t wait for the speedruns of this game to drop because they will be magnificently chaotic. It all pieces together into a unique speed-rush platformer that it feels wrong for Wario Land comparisons alone, it’s more like a Sonic game that’s actually good (shots fired). That’s also one of the downsides of gameplay since your first forays into levels will be exactly like your first time playing a Sonic level, when you clumsily bonked into every wall possible and struggled to maintain momentum. Or it’s like your second time playing Sonic, where you tried mapping out the environment with a momentum-heavy character not built for careful exploration. I prefer the speedy platforming of games like Celeste, Neon White, or Grapple Dog to Pizza Tower but there’s no comparison which game is the more singular auteur vision. You also have to applaud the level of restraint the game takes to keep the experience fresh the whole way through. You get six-to-seven hours of platforming but Pizza Tower constantly changes gimmicks and challenges. The level WAR in this game is an incredible high-tension level with heavy timing pressure but in retrospect, imagine the restraint needed to keep the mechanic to just one level! Every other platformer would love to repeat the gimmick for each world, maybe introduce the rockets in the second iteration, really stretch out the concept over and over. But Pizza Tower has the confidence to make just one level of WAR, one golf level, one sneaking level, and one city level. You get the impression the developers wanted to make the best possible game and the best possible game wants you to have six perfect hours, not twelve hours with repetition. It’s a fantastic choice. Pizza Tower is destined to join the rare audience of cult classic indie games. It’s exactly the type of polarizing/incredible gem that generates a dedicated long-lasting fan base like Undertale, Hylics, Omori, LISA, all the others. It’s hard to describe, but I played this game near to it's launch and just knew a hardcore fanbase has already built the wikipedia for the Pizza Tower Extended Universe (PTEU). I fully expect a Pizza Tower subreddit filled with fan art and fanfics of Peppino’s reaction to the Chiefs winning the super bowl, his first day as defendant in traffic court with Pizza Face as the plaintiff, or if he found the authentic original Mona Lisa in his attic and it was pizza. I wrote “Fangamer will one day sell a Peppino doll” and then checked Fangamer and saw a Peppino doll on the front page. So go grab this game and find out what all the fuss is about, you will either fall in love or at least respect the singular vision. PS: Youtube's end of year wrap let me know my most played song this year was Thousand March from Pizza Tower's WAR level. Like Metal Gear Rising last year, a video game OST became my background music for gym PR attempts. Octopath Traveler 2 has the best OST of the year but, if I'm just picking just one song, I have to go with Thousand March. The perfect song for the perfect mood of the perfect level. The mood of course being AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! AHHHHH!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!! NOOOOO!!! AHHHH!!!!!! 4. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (4.5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSbUPaLTTUg It’s March 12, 2023, and I am in the lobby of a hotel in Tokyo’s Ginza district trying to hide behind rolling luggage. My wife and I have to get to the airport but, priorities here, I need to unlock Tears of the Kingdom on our Switch before our flight. Thanks to time zone differences, the game's unlock time is mid-day Tokyo only a few hours before our flight departs. But it's not working: the hotel WiFi is spotty and I can't get this Switch to connect online. If there was anything to cap off this incredible vacation, it's delivering TOTK ready-to-play to my wife in time for this long flight. In fact, all the stress right now is a simple translation about the game's hype and how much we want to return to the world of Hyrule. It can't let us down, absolutely no way. TOTK must be so good, that this small delay is unnecessary pain. The solution comes when I connect the Switch to my phone's hotspot and finally, the game is ready to play when, if, we're ready. Sitting at the airport lounge, we split a pair of earbuds and play the opening together, walking through the underground caves of Hyrule. We don’t skip the text and listen to all of the voice-acting. Although my wife intended to play TOTK first, she falls asleep on the flight early and leaves me to play the game alone. And not just "alone" like we usually think, alone like playing a brand-new game on a long international flight. Fourteen hours with no internet, no guides, not even an idea about how others react and solve this game. Just a comfy reclining seat, a power outlet, and an awareness of the stellar metacritic score. What does playing TOTK look like when you truly have no idea or help? If you're like me, it's immersive and difficult. For all the lateral thinking that video games have taught me, TOTK's training plateau caused me to die more often than end-game areas of past games and, at the same time, try every possible option at my disposal. Plummeting off the TOTK plateau feels monumental and an even larger sense of baffling freedom than leaving BOTW's plateau. The meditative and peaceful mood remains just as powerful as BOTW when exploring the land, albeit with less surprise as you recognize the general layout even if the map changed around a fair amount of details. Where was a Zelda sequel supposed to go after BOTW? Do we pretend that the format could be reversed, that the series from here on out could be anything else but “BOTW with more”? The only other thing that would fit the series is to break our expectations with a super-linear story but the Link's Awakening remake launched fairly recently. Nintendo must venture forward with the path laid out by BOTW. There’s no escape. If you’re old enough, you still remember the negative reaction to Wind Waker’s announcement and cel-shaded graphics. That knee-jerk reaction feels quaint in modern times. Following-up OoT and Majora’s Mask seems easy compared to following-up BOTW with something better. Give this team all the credit for somehow surpassing our lofty expectations. TOTK heard your BOTW complaints about the lackluster final fight and the minor involvement of story. All the proof I need for TOTK's improvement is the wide-eyed jaw-drop about that one particular dragon flying high above. The team knew they needed a strong story after BOTW's minimalism and, despite the relatively weaker characters and beat-by-beat flashbacks/cutscenes, delivered on some truly satisfying ending moments. Despite all the game’s successes, I can’t escape the thought that TOTK’s content is a step too far into the overstuffed approach and away from BOTW’s simplicity. The screen litters with your friend’s avatars guiding you or popping a notification into your UI, or you happen upon randomly-generated side-quests to hold up a sign. Fun the first few times, but easily becomes repetitive. BOTW gave you the surprise of incredible immersion; TOTK takes an unfortunate step away from immersion to expand the world's content. As if you brushed some dirt off a rock in one of the towns and discovered a Ubisoft logo. I still love it, but would love it more with the engagement dial turned down a tad. It’s a few weeks after that fateful plane ride and we have the game playing in my in-law’s house. My wife and I play TOTK but my sister-in-law walks in and ask if this is the new Zelda she’s heard about. It is, and she’s just in time to see me build a hot-air balloon from parts not meant to levitate. I try to light three balloons at the same time but mistime it so badly that my platform wobbles left to right, throwing burning wood everywhere. We’re laughing at the chaos. I stand next to a burning pile of wood with my contraption about to squash me and, gently caress it, I open the menu and select "wait until morning." Now we’re dying laughing. Video games are art, don’t let anyone else tell you something different. 3. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26w76OmzEKI When playing Xenoblades Chronicles 3, it doesn’t take long to think “this is the game Xenoblades Chronicles 2 should’ve been”. But after a while, you think “this is the game Xenoblade Chronicles should’ve been”. Blasphemy, but it doesn’t stop there. This is the game every other action RPG should’ve been. This is what every game that wished you to immerse in a gigantic adventurous world, build a small team of lovable young adults to defeat gods with the power of friendship should've been. You should've been playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 makes the leap to all-time classic that this grandiose series always desired. Like previous games, the world is enormous and the story holds 100+ hours of bizarre plot twists but finally, here are the well-written characters and thematic plot beats you wanted in a Xenoblades game. The overwhelming and confusing combat systems from XB2 are replaced with ones intuitive and fun for experimenting. XB3’s numerous side quests build out the world’s inhabitants and themes just as constructively as the main plot, a far cry from the hundreds of rote fetch quests offered in XB1. It’s not about doing something completely different so much as it is a perfectly-made refinement. Xenoblades previously asked a little too much of you. Now, you delight asking for more. There’s too much to cover on the game’s content so to cut down on text, what summarizes XB3’s incredible experience to me is…Riku. Nipon have been a staple of XB1 and XB2, memorable Nipon existed before Riku, but any XB3 player could tell you Riku is miles better as a character than any other Nipon in this series. But how are you supposed to convey that all the little changes to XB3 that Riku embodies lead to a game so good, you could play for 150 hours and not get bored? Or maybe the better summary is the end of a certain chapter where, I kid you not, you have three hours of cutscenes and boss fights in a row. You may have shivered at that last sentence but I can tell you, it’s the best. You walk out of that sequence hitting a well-deserved save point and your mind races to put everything together in a way that only Xenoblades dares to try and that only XB3 executes well. But there’s something else I need to talk about XB3’s incredible experience and it may not be positive. The feeling XB3 gives is familiar and you may have felt it before but it is The MMORPG Call. You know it when you’re in it. The Call brings you back for another quest and a deeper detail in the world to learn, week in, week out. I don’t want to leave the world of XB3 because it’s still interesting and my lore knowledge is incomplete. It’s such a good game that it becomes a problem to disconnect. It’s XB3’s credit that a single-player game can inspire the same level of player attachment to its battle-weary world, and I simply warn you as you start one of the best RPGs you’ll ever play. Actually, two warnings: it’s very anime. Ok, now you’re good to go. 2. Octopath Traveler 2 (5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23F7lA8jbTE I’ve had a nagging thought since the beginning of this year and I want you to have the same internal debate. You’re strong enough, you can think about it without accepting it. Octopath Traveler 2 is the greatest traditional JRPG ever made Wooo okay, hear me out. There are a lot of RPGs out there but there’s a little bucket of games you recognize as traditional JRPGs: turn-based combat, job systems, saving your game at a old-timey pub, a lot of text boxes, a hero’s journey played mostly straight, a LOT of text boxes. You think of Dragon Quest but not XCOM, Final Fantasy V but not Baldur’s Gate, and Chrono Trigger but not Paper Mario (or maybe you do? I dunno). The first Octopath Traveler was a love letter to this genre but had too many glaring issues to be a recommended experience for most (not me though, that battle system was top tier from the start). But here comes Octopath Traveler 2 to fix so many of the past gameplay/writing complaints, you end up with a similar-looking game that delivers a far more satisfying experience. Here’s an example: The merchant story in Octopath Traveler 1 follows Tressa, an upbeat inexperienced traveling trader looking to find a valuable journal, who learns “the real treasure are the friends I made along the way.” There’s quotes around that last line because it’s a real unironic line she says at the end of her chapter. It’s only memorable in the worst possible way. Twice in my life I've joked about the worst possible story beat happening and then it actually happened seconds later: Game of Thrones when Bran becomes King and Tressa's ending in OT1. Octopath Traveler 2’s merchant story on the other hand follows Partito, a swaggering wheeling-and-dealing guy from a dying mining town with the strongest well-I-reckon accent you’ll ever hear. The guy’s an instant fan favorite as he defeats the game’s John D. Rockerfeller stand-in on his dehumanizing factory island over the invention of steam engines and beats the poo poo out of his megatrain. The willingness to make interesting characters and locations, vary the story’s tone, and stand on a political belief (it’s no Disco Elysium but give credit) makes Partito’s story engaging in ways OT1 could never imagine. And I can’t mention Partito without his 80’s guitar-and-sax theme. When that guitar riff kicks in, fitting like a glove against all logic of time-appropriate instrumentation, how could you not love this game? And know that there’s seven other characters with similarly quality stories that I’m not even touching on? We need to talk about the music here, oh my god. I would completely understand if this becomes your favorite OST of all-time. The default Partito theme would be the most memorable track on every other game’s soundtrack and here, it’s maybe top ten? Top 15 depending on how you divide these tracks? I started this review with the hot take of OT2 as the best traditional JRPG, but I don’t think it’s a hot take to say the same about the soundtrack. Chrono Trigger had a good run, but OT2 smokes it. It’s the pinnacle of bombastic & dramatic operatic music that other RPGs like Final Fantasy or Fire Emblem strive to compose. It's absurd that Song of Hope, Those Who Deny The Dawn, Critical Clash II, Crestlands Night, Cait Theme, and all those unique character-specific variations of The Journey for Everything Ends all came from one game by one composer. Put this soundtrack in the same instant-classic tier as Undertale, Nier:Automata, Persona 5, and Ocarina of Time. If you’re an NBA fan, maybe this parallel will work better: Octopath Traveler 2 is the Giannis Antetokounmpo of traditional JRPGs. There are more influential NBA players, players that have won more titles, scored more points, players that were the face of the league for longer periods of time. But if you could pick the best player outside of time and context to win a game of one-on-one, you aren’t picking 1960s Bob Cousey, someone who dominated the game in his era, you are picking Giannis because you know in your heart Giannis could kill Cousey by dunking his six-foot-one body through the rim. So play Octopath Traveler 2 next opportunity you get. It’s simply better. 1. Persona 5 Royal (5/5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUzYISKKAI Just like that song by The Wipers, Persona 5 is really long, wants the youth to get angry and tear poo poo down, loses steam in the middle, and still ends up being a classic. I used to play guitar along to this song in high school, not totally understanding “scales” and “timing” but I swear my commitment was solid and I could make feedback noises. Even Persona 5 knows being a teen is not as fun as being an adult but there’s a sense of rebellion that you can’t quite replicate anymore. There’s tons of media about high school, some of it targeting nostalgic adults and some towards teens who are in the thick of it currently. P5 might be my favorite story in the latter group: the game that puts a hand on the adolescent player’s shoulder and says “You’re right: adults are bullshit and they’re lying to you about everything.” So what are you to do? “You go out there and change things.” What things? “The things that piss you off!” and then Persona 5 spray-paints a Banksy on your school gym of the Monopoly Man hugging the Instagram logo. There's room for improvement but I admire the attempt. My replay of Persona 5 was specifically for the new content in P5 Royal, a rare replay for me given my preference to try a new game over a past one, and the replay gave a new perspective on how the individual parts combine for the total experience. I still can't get over the amount of options presented to players during each free time: You can hang out with confidants, you can infiltrate a mind palace, you can explore Momentos, you can boost your personal stats, you can read books, play games, workout at the gym, fix equipment, eat, play, sleep. But all of it relates to the wish fulfillment of a real teen, the massive options a video game could present that real life never seems to allow you to act upon fully. What does your optimal afterschool time look like without parents breathing down your neck about college applications? The world is yours, and it's even more staggering when you're a teen superhero with a to-do list a mile long. The truth is, any young adult would have the same feeling of overwhelming options available regardless of Persona ownership. What's stopping you from calling a friend or visiting an independent bookstore? It's technically possible, Persona 5 makes the options and downsides tangible. The replay also surfaced the writing quality of this game which, even if this game is #1 on my list, tends to serve the overall narrative well but never feels great during individual scenes. It's easy to skip through confidant dialogue and not miss much value despite how you feel about the holistic message. Persona 5 Royal feels better summarized than it does word-for-word, the most pressing change I wish for in Persona 6. The other critique that comes up around Persona 5 is the friend group, the Phantom Thieves themselves. I agree that the Persona 4 team is a more believable rag-tag group of friends but want to recognize what I think Persona 5's meant to accomplish. Each friend represents a unique social clique but always reflects the non-popular students, those on the outside looking in. It seems untrue at first: Ryuji is essentially a jock bro, Makoto is class president, Ann is literally an international model, Haru's family is worth billions, but none of them feel like they're accepted fully by their peers. That's not a new positioning in High School stories, but I want to encourage you to see the Phantom Thieves as the game's attempt to find a relatable image to any player. By presenting such a diverse group, maybe you find pieces of yourself in each member. Although I'm not any character fully, I was the Ryuji track & field team captain, the art snob of Yusuke, the SA forums poster of Futaba, and the overachiever of Makoto. Persona 5 presents a wide funnel for relatability, and this gives the game the ability to pivot that connection across players into the wish fulfillment of changing the world's order. If you relate to anything occurring in Persona 5, you know something is inherently wrong with the way we expect people to grow up and survive. I wish Persona 5 would commit to a leftist stance since the game beats around the bush with a deliberately vague "everyone better listen to the youth" message, most obvious with the Sun Confidant, but I'm happy players could run with the message when the game shies away from commitment. So that brings me to something outside the game itself. Earlier this year, my wife and I went to Japan for two weeks, the biggest vacation I’ve ever been on. I didn’t grow up traveling and the concept of two entire weeks of international travel seemed impossible as a kid. We spent half our time in Tokyo, walking around various neighborhoods with a few locations in mind but ultimately, letting ourselves walk and wander. To be frank, I live in a big city and love walking around big cities most of all. There’s an energy and upbeat vibe that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of the world. We walked through Shibuya twice, once during the day and once during the night, and yes, we took pictures that P5 fans would appreciate. Construction prevented a truly accurate "thief's hideout overlooking Shibuya" photo but our attempt was close enough. We walked through Harajuku and Ann would absolutely wait 40 minutes for a Crepe here. We entered a Bic Camera store and finally realized why all those geeky-tech Futaba events took place here. On the subway, my wife leaned in my ear to say “that’s the stop where the Persona 5 school is located”. I swear we didn’t come to Tokyo for the game but I can’t deny it helped us become familiar with the city and make it a little more special. Walking around Tokyo in real life hammered home a theme in P5 that flew over my head initially: the game is an enormous call to action for kids to explore the city around them. Persona 3 and 4 take place in tangible-yet-fictional locations, SMT games often take place in Tokyo, but Persona 5 prides itself on the thought “Imagine yourself having realistic fun in Tokyo!” You, yes you the person playing this, YOU can walk through the fashionable streets of Shinjuku, check out the tech & anime stores of Akihabara, spend too much money in Ginza, and pedal a swan boat in Inokashira Park. They are not fictional, they are real! And they are fun in real life too! This is living! Think about how often your confidants remark about their location. They talk to Joker but c'mon, they’re breaking the fourth wall and talking to the player. If you like the swan boats here, you’ll love pedaling them in reality. Now think about how it feels to play a video game back home to boost your proficiency stat. A little lacking of an experience, isn't it? Persona 5 Strikers takes the same promotion to other cities and, arguably, a little too bluntly when using the Phantom Thieves as encouraging travel guides. Persona 5 strikes a good balance as you may not live in Tokyo but maybe you haven’t been to a specific neighborhood near you yet. Maybe you need the extra push to find yourself somewhere new and exciting. I love the irony of putting “touch grass” as the theme of a 100+ hour RPG but it fits well. The people who need to hear this are the people who willingly play 100+ hour RPGs. They are the ones who need to have a protagonist level-up their friendship at a ramen restaurant to encourage actually visiting a ramen restaurant with a friend. I’m no different I guess, I did end up going to Tokyo in real life. The last day that we were able to explore Tokyo, in real life and not the game, we went to Odaiba to check out the seaside and the shopping district. We took selfies in front of the Unicorn Gundam, ate soft-serve matcha ice cream, and walked along the shore. I saw plenty of high-school aged cliques just hanging out with each other in lunchtime chatter. I don’t get nostalgic about my teen years, read my Perfect Tides review for a recap, but I get happy when I see the next generation trending in the right direction. Just like P5, It could’ve been so easy for these students to stay home but they made the optional effort to come out here and enjoy their time with each other, the best way to spend your limited time. Live fully because the calendar is all-too short and life’s a beautiful thing. Wake up, get up, get out there. DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jan 1, 2024 |
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Dec 4, 2023 18:27
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Thank you, and I agree on the surprise factor for the Song of Hope. I'll update my review accordingly with the Partitio theme.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:30
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bone emulator posted:Hi, I'm sure this gets asked all the time, but what are the rules regarding DLC? You can vote for DLC! Last year, Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye was #43. Granted, most people will vote for the base game but it could be interesting if you felt significantly different between the base game's cases and both DLCs.
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Dec 6, 2023 23:03
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I'm looking forward to whoever lives up to the DOOM wad for game nominations from last year.Red Alert 2 Yuris Revenge posted:I always enjoy the lists – I read every post in these threads – but I know not all of you are about reading. You’re about gaming! So this year I thought I’d provide an option for those of you who may wish to engage with a top ten in the most gamer fashion: blasting demons. If you’d like to instead play my goty list in Doom 2, here you go: https://github.com/RelaxOD/doomwads/blob/main/gotyrod.wad Jerusalem posted:Earlier today at the Relax Or DIE studios.... DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Dec 6, 2023 |
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Dec 6, 2023 23:07
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theblackw0lf posted:I'm surprised Alan Wake 2 hasn't shown up more often. Honestly, I'm trying to cram AW2 during December to see if I can add it into my list in time. Kinda similar issue with BG3, where I just need a large block of time for the game but have a fair amount of backlog ahead of it.
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Dec 7, 2023 22:56
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Escobarbarian posted:I bought Perfect Tides after I saw it at the top of a list last year but never got around to it. How does it play on Steam Deck? It should work okay. There was an update this October that added Steam Deck and controller support, which also had a hotfix in late November for initial issues (via Steam's community page). I'll install it and double-check if it all works correctly.
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Dec 13, 2023 00:24
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fridge corn posted:This was a really cool review of Persona 5. When art can inspire you in real life and get your brain juices flowing and making new neural connections it is a truly beautiful thing. Sounds like you guys had a fab time in Japan! What did you get up to outside of Tokyo? Thank you! I'll put my travel talk in spoilers so it doesn't derail the overall game chat and lists. Also, I plan to add a little more to the P5 Royal review since there's so much more about the game on my replay this year that stands out. Outside of Tokyo, we spent three days in Kyoto and two days in Osaka (really only one full day). In both cities, we chose hotels that were pretty much in the city's respective downtowns with a decent idea of where we would walk each day. Kyoto was incredible and totally understand why it's such a destination: lots of parks, temples, and walking paths to stroll down. We averaged ~11 miles walking each day throughout our two weeks in Japan and nowhere did we walk more than Kyoto. It was my first time visiting so we made sure to visit the major landmarks like the Inari Temple, Kinkaku-ji, Bamboo Forest, Nijo Castle, and Nishiki Market. Although it was raining for a good portion of our Kyoto trip, it kinda enhanced the greenery of where we visited. We visited the Inari Temple really early in the morning to beat the crowd and woo boy do you get the sense that everyone wants to visit here yet nobody else realizes this place involves walking uphill. Really scenic, but we passed by so many well-meaning people who clearly looked uncomfortable or unprepared. Literally stumbled across a Ramen restaurant which ended up being our favorite Ramen place of the whole trip. We also stayed overnight at a Ryokan which was far less time than it deserves, I could spend an entire day detaching from work, sipping tea, and staring at a small garden. Osaka was near the end of our trip and we pathed a route southward from the main bullet train station down to Osaka Castle, to Amerika-Mura (I passed this opportunity up but, how did this place know I would consider a Seattle SuperSonics 1996 Western Conference Finals shirt. I'm not even a Sonics fan, just how did this vintage shirt come into existence), and down further to Denden Town to pick up some gifts for our friends. We also stopped by two places my wife recognized from foodie blogs/Netflix, I wish I could recall both names right now. By this point, our legs accumulated enough miles and we were exhausted and headed back to our hotel. We ended that day with a dinner at Tempura Bonji and a few drinks at the 40 Sky Bar & Lounge while watching the sunset, which was the perfect cap on the day. After that, we headed back to Tokyo for a few last days before flying out. DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 00:53
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Phenotype posted:This looks super weird and interesting! I checked out the other games by this guy on Steam, and they all seem trippy and crazy in a very cool way. Which one should you start with? Betrayal at Club Low looks like the most recent, but I guess Off-Peak is the first? And it's free, too! It has to be between Betrayal at Club Low or Norwood Suite and up to your preference on gameplay style: Betrayal at Club Low if you want a goofy dice-roll RPG and are okay with random dice failures causing a fail state OR Norwood Suite if you lean towards walking simulator exploration gameplay akin to Gone Home. I found Betrayal at Club Low more engaging due to the bizarre RPG elements, much better replay value, and it hits the sense of "inch wide map, mile deep interaction" harder. You also have a better sense of what to do next in Betrayal whereas Norwood Suite depends on you combing a hotel for any interactions without much direction, it can be adventure game-esq on that front. But, both games have the best attributes, you can't go wrong with either as a first game choice and both are very short (less than 3 hours each). Jazzpunk is a very good parallel to Norwood Suite and Off-Peak. You're going through someone's unrelenting and pure vision for surreal comedy exploration gameplay. I feel like people will be split between Jazzpunk and Cosmo D games based on their sense of humor but, IMHO, Norwood/Betrayal found the perfect vein of absurd humor that I love. DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 20:56
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ChrisBTY posted:10) Dark Scavenger: Somebody either on this forum or elsewhere mentioned this game and I was immediately intrigued. 5 dollars later I was engrossed. It's a unique experience for sure. You go from room-to-room clicking on various interactable objects and handling the events that occur. Sometimes it's fights. Sometimes it's conversation. Sometimes you get items from them. Items you can then turn into either a weapon, a gadget or a follower with the help of your 3 trusty crewmates. They all more-or less function the same but you don't know what the item will do until it is forged and each crewmate can only forge one item per room. So you'll wind up with an even allotment of all 3 categories. This is a pretty short game. (My playthrough came in at 4 hours) but it's a fascinating ride. And one I had to put on the list just to share it with anybody who might be interested in that kind of thing. Love to see Dark Scavenger on someone else's radar! It made my fuller 2022 GOTY list and it's one of those tiny inexpensive bizarre gems on Steam that deserves more attention.
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Dec 28, 2023 17:47
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VideoGames posted:There were 756 unique games submitted, an extra 70 more than last year. Really cool work this year, that’s a lot of lists!
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Jan 14, 2024 19:08
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ShoogaSlim posted:
Your system wants you to prioritize playing NORCO, Super Mario Wonder, and A Short Hike. It is perfect.
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Jan 17, 2024 01:33
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Epic High Five posted:Shooga have you ever played a Zachtronics game I’ve always wondered what it says about my brain that I love Infinifactory yet have relative difficulty with SpaceChem & Opus Magnum. There’s so much alike in these games but adding that extra dimension makes things way easier for me to grasp, somehow.
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Jan 17, 2024 01:37
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Ragequit posted:Games Done Quick charity stream is kicking off with an Octopath 2 (ranked number 5 here hell yeah) run in a few minutes: https://www.twitch.tv/GamesDoneQuick They just read my donation praising OT2 out on the stream! That shoutout should count extra to my GOTY vote.
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Jan 17, 2024 01:54
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