This marks my tenth year of writing these retrospectives. In 2014, when I wrote my very first of these entries, it was on the tail end of an exercise where I updated this blog every single day. I updated it for 451 days in a row starting in 2013, even as I freely admitted along the way that I occasionally fudged the numbers by double-posting or penning a post shortly after midnight. By the end of October 2014, I'd decided I was done with that exercise. In its place, I committed to updating only when I was impelled to do so. Gradually, that evolved into putting more effort into each individual entry.
The first of these higher-effort entries was the 2014 Video Game Retrospective, a lengthy recap of all of the games I'd finished that year. Following this was a series of articles and full-length reviews of various gaming topics. I even started writing and creating full video reviews of games I was playing. That stopped in 2017.
Although I had a brief resurgence of regular updates in 2019, the only real consistent presence on this blog has been these yearly retrospectives. I start to think about them every December. It's easy to keep it in mind since I've been regularly updating my Backloggery for well over 16 years. Did you know that I've beaten roughly 708 games in my life? That's a misleading number when you consider how much DLC, episodes, and shorter games are in there, but it's still a staggering sum.
It's easy to become wistful whenever I revisit this blog and regularly confront the man I was ten or more years ago—and how much I've changed. And how much I haven't. Regardless of who reads these entries, I appreciate them as a stabilizing presence in my life. It would be easy to call this 10th anniversary entry the last one. We'll see about that. I think if I'm still around this time of year next year, I'll want to keep it going.
With that preamble out of the way, let's get to the games. The numbers are a little funny this time around, but by my count, I finished 54 full games, but if we're counting DLC or story chapters, that number naturally becomes much higher. We'll get to that as we go!
I clearly have an affinity for card games, particularly those of the roguelike variety. We're talking Slay the Spire, Monster Train, and a whole slew of others that are less popular but still really gel with me. I like the genre so much that I've spent time specifically seeking out new and unique takes on the formula. I've found some gems like Astrea, Cobalt Core, and Across the Obelisk this way. Based on the amount of time I've spent on games in this genre, I assumed I Was a Teenage Exocolonist was being recommended to me because it was that kind of game—but it really isn't. And that's fine, because what it is is a wonderful, heartfelt narrative game with a superficial card-based gameplay element. To be honest, the card part of the game is my least favorite part in this case. Now, about a year after having played it, I struggle to remember the specifics of how the card portions of the game even work, despite being an intensely mechanics-focused person. I could take the time to go over that information with you, but it's ultimately not important. What is important is tracing the path of the titular teenage exocolonist, who grows up over the course of ten years. Each of these years is a unique unit of gameplay in which you must make choices not only on how to develop your growing protagonist through education and through exercise, but in how you forge lasting friendships with your fellow colonists. This is definitely one of those 'choices matter" kind of games—and you'll find the story goes a long way in really driving that home with the tragic outcomes of some of those choices. Above all else, this is really more of a life simulation game than a card game, but its beautiful aesthetic, poignant story, and incredible soundtrack make it more than worth the price of admission, even if it's not what I was expecting whatsoever.
#2: Super Robot Wars W (Nintendo DS; January 22nd)
Now we're back to the crunchy gremlin gameplay. By now, I've played a whole pile of these games. I've gotten into the routine of playing one or two of these games a year. I just can't stop! They're extremely addictive. It's impossible to overstate just how cool giant robots are, but I'm also a huge strategy RPG junkie. Super Robot Wars W in particular strikes the perfect balance of fulfilling the power fantasy of annihilating wave after wave of foes with your mechanized army without reducing the friction so much that your choices barely matter. The most recent SRW titles are guilty of just this. W is not a difficult game like many of the older titles, but its ease and accessibility serve primarily to enhance the fun factor instead of negate it in this case. It also has a really interesting roster full of my favorite kind of mechs—the fast, agile ones. It's one of only a few games that feature units from Tekkaman Blade, which is interesting because those guys aren't even mechs at all. They're more like power suits. For the purposes of this game, they're functionally the same, though, and it blends in just great with primary characters from Gundam Seed and a rare entrant from a manga offshoot—Gundam Seed Astray. There's also the tried and true Gundam Wing and Martian Successor Nadesico, both of which have appeared in dozens of these games. Detonator Orgun is another rare inclusion and another example of a "fast little guy" kind of mech. Finally, we have Full Metal Panic!, which I'm always glad to see since it's one of the few series in these games I've actually watched all the way through.
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Hey, I already mentioned this one! There's a good possibility I stumbled across Cobalt Core around the same time as Exocolonist. This one's definitely more what I was expecting it to be, in that it's a strategic card game in the vein of a Slay the Spire. Its niche is that you put together your decks by combining up to three pilots from a pool of seven(*) different choices. This scratches a similar itch as Monster Train, which gets a lot its replayability from combining different monster tribes. Instead of defeating monsters, you're piloting a spaceship and systematically dismantling opposing crafts. Your choice of ship and pilots add a lot of strategic depth to a relatively simple and accessible game. There's even a cute story attached to the meta progression of the game—and as with almost any game where this is the case, my opinion of it is elevated considerably by a killer soundtrack. Although I haven't played this much since I finished it, I've listened to Aaron Cherof's score regularly all year.
It's actually unreal to think that I only started playing Tekken 8 this year. It kind of makes sense though, considering the game launched just four days before this. This completion time only counts the story mode, of course, which is a silly little romp that doesn't teach you much about the game itself. I'm still fascinated by the Tekken dev's decision to have each character speak their native language in cutscenes and never explain why everyone can understand each other. It's actually really entertaining to watch a cutscene of a bunch of Japanese characters speaking and then suddenly someone will speak up in French or English. It doesn't make any sense, but it's entertaining. As for the game itself, I invested about 100 hours into online play, which seems like a lot, but is really only a drop in the bucket as far as a fighting game is concerned. I learned enough to get to Shinryuu, one of the red ranks. That's fairly beginner to intermediate level, as far as I know. I was definitely abusing Alisa's oppressive tools to get there. Figures I'd pick the android character with chainsaw arms. I'm terminally robot-brained. This is the first time I've invested this much into a 3D fighting game, which was definitely an interesting experience. It's extremely different from Street Fighter, but not in an unpleasant way. With the recent news of Final Fantasy XVI's Clive coming to the roster, it's tempting to make a return to this game, but I'm still addicted to Street Fighter! I'm also interested in checking out City of the Wolves when it comes out, and even Virtua Fighter 6. We'll see!
I have an interesting history with puzzle and puzzle-adjacent games. It would be easy to say I don't generally like puzzles, but I don't think that's true. I think there's a certain type of puzzle that I find endlessly frustrating and unfun. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not easy to please where puzzles are concerned. I also don't have the same kind of patience for them that I would have for, say, an extremely difficult combat challenge in other genres. I'll bang my head against a wall for hours against a tough Dark Souls boss or a difficult map in a strategy RPG. A tough puzzle, though? Well, I'm going to have to be immensely invested for me not to look it up immediately. Void Stranger sidesteps this a bit by structuring the entire game around hundreds of very small puzzles. Each of them might not be so tough in isolation, but it's the continuous layering of them over top of each other that can make them challenging as a whole. It also very much rewards trial and error, which is absolutely my preferred method of engaging with any game. I don't necessarily want to sit and think about my next action for several minutes at a time. I want to experiment and get feedback on what those choices mean pretty much right away. If I can revert that choice and try other options, all the better. This is just one level on which Void Stranger works for me, though. It also draws me in with its mysterious aesthetic. When you start, you find yourself in a tile-based monochrome room with very little in the way of instruction. Slowly but surely, you figure things out. You start removing tiles and placing them elsewhere. As things start to click, hypnotic music ebbs and flows. You descend further and further into the game's labyrinth and encounter tougher and tougher puzzles. The structure of the game unravels. You think "this can't possibly be what the game wants me to do, is it?" It might be.
I've really gotten into romhacks in the past couple of years—but especially this year. I mean, I've been playing fan translations of Japanese games for well over ten years, but actual fan-made modifications of existing games have been a very rare thing for me to try out. Clearly I've been missing out! Pokemon is absolutely perfect for this treatment, because more recent games have somewhat declined in quality—but have still introduced a lot of cool new mechanics and Pokemon. On top of that, these games have always struggled with finding the right balance for difficulty. In other words, they have none. Pokemon has always been a great series for hanging out, catching cute creatures, and annihilating everything in your way, but the mechanics behind the scenes are actually surprisingly deep. Romhacks like Radical Red give you the opportunity to actually experience those deep mechanics in a meaningful way. Approaching a new gym leader and actually feeling challenged by it to some extent is a surprising and welcome breath of fresh air. On top of all that, I played this concurrently with a friend and we challenged ourselves to compose teams with no shared elements. I did a few little collaborative projects like that this year in a similar vein.
This is the only game I played for PS4 this year and it may well be the last I ever play. Several years ago, I bought the entire Yakuza franchise on sale on PSN with every intention of playing through the whole thing in short order. That clearly didn't happen. It all started with Yakuza Kiwami in 2018, which didn't give the absolute best first impression of the series. Having said that, I loved the story and characters. Fortunately, Yakuza 0 made me fall in love after that, but then it felt like I'd taken a bit of a step back when I finished Yakuza Kiwami 2 in 2020. These games' excellent narrative kept propelling me forward, even though I was keenly aware that Yakuza 0's serviceable combat was going to be gone for the foreseeable future as I played through these lengthy games. In 2021, I finished Yakuza 3, which was definitely the roughest around the edges of the whole lot. Although the story was just as interesting as usual, having to stick with just Kiryu in a noticeably weaker combat system compared to even the Kiwami titles didn't compel me to move on right away. Enter Yakuza 4, which I finished in 2022. Even at the time, I remarked "why do I wait so long until I play another Yakuza game?" Even then, it was self evident. The combat in these games just isn't that great. It was at its best in Yakuza 0, but even then it wasn't what I'd call exceptional. What helps in Yakuza 4 and 5 is the multiple protagonist format, which adds a lot of variety even from a basic combat system. 5 goes even further here in that it bumps up the number of protagonists from 4 to 5. It's almost like the number in the title is relevant here. Of course, one of those protagonists is Haruka Sawamura herself, Kiryu's adoptive daughter, who isn't out on the street busting heads, but training to be a pop idol! In a strange twist, a full segment of this game puts you in control of Haruka as she learns to dance and sing. You'll find yourself playing a series of rhythm games during this segment. I must emphasize that this is not just a short one-off segment, but a full-fledged chapter of the full game—and I love the audacity of the developers in doing this. Yakuza 5 is a gigantic, messy game full of tons of varied gameplay. Kiryu drives a taxi for a job in his chapter, and that's a full side story in which you not only race in a taxi, but complete mundane taxi jobs. Saejima, returning from Yakuza 4, is marooned on a snowy mountain and must hunt and forage for food and profit. Yes, there's a full hunting mechanic in his chapter and again, this is an important aspect of the game. Akiyama, the moneylender from Yakuza 4 also returns, and he's tied together with Haruka as her de facto manager. The last of the playable characters is Shinada, an aging baseball pro who retired in disgrace after a match-fixing scandal. Can you guess what his chapter-defining minigame is? I bet you can.
I've spent too much time on a single entry from this list, but I can't overemphasize how much Yakuza 5 made an impact on me. I already liked Yakuza 4 a lot despite some gripes just because I'm generally a sucker for ensemble casts in video games (or in anything, really), but Yakuza 5 is just so extra about everything that I can't help but really dig it. Don't get me wrong—the combat's still not amazing, and the game is really stuffed to bursting. It relishes in excess, but man, it just really stuck with me.
So, I've generally played each new main Pokemon game as it's come out over the years, but the notable exceptions were the direct sequels like BW2 and Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon. I rectified that this year, but of course I wasn't content with simply playing the game without a gimmick. For Radical Red, which is already a romhack, my friend and I did a modified Soul Link in which we composed our teams with no shared types. For White 2, we did something similar, but instead restricted ourselves to a single type apiece. He went with Bug and I went with Rock. Since there weren't any additional difficulty modifiers on top of that, the run still ended up being fairly trivial, but it was a fun time in a game from a generation I do tend to enjoy. It's funny—although I like Pokemon a lot, I wouldn't necessarily call myself a diehard fan. Nonetheless, I've played basically every single mainline game now at one point or another.
There's a lineage of "games inspired by Earthbound" at this point, several of which I've already played. I'm a big Earthbound fan, of course, but there's always a little reticence when I play a new game in that vein, because I'm never sure if they're going to be worth my time—if they're just going to be a derivative shadow of the original. That's a valid concern, but it certainly doesn't apply to Omori, which is inspired by Earthbound but is ultimately a game with its own creative vision. Everything about this game really just works in perfect harmony, from its bright and sunshiny aesthetic, tranquil but melodic soundtrack, and simple but appealing combat system. The combat is "like Earthbound" superficially, but adds complexity by introducing an Emotion system, which interacts with your characters' abilities and their stats. That's all well and good, but it's not the reason I'd recommend playing Omori. I'd recommend playing it because the characters are likable, and the plot is interesting—until, eventually, it becomes legitimately emotionally moving. It's such a cheery and carefree game on the surface, but it hides significantly darker themes below that. Although for a good chunk of the game I found it pleasant and enjoyable, it wasn't until near the conclusion that I realized just how memorable and affecting an experience it actually was. That's pretty rare for video games in general, so it's always a title I'll recommend.
I've tended over this year to keep one game in my rotation that slots into that nebulous genre populated by narrative games, adventure games, and visual novels. I frequently play/read them right before bed, so I don't often get through them especially quickly—but this is the first of several in that category for this year. As for Zero Time Dilemma itself, I can say that this is the third title in the Zero Escape series and probably my least favorite. The first two games are enjoyable due to their labyrinthine narratives, wacky but interesting characters, and fiendishly difficult puzzles. What sets them apart from similar adventure/narrative games is that the puzzles are legitimately tough. I'm not great at puzzles in the first place, so I've spent a long time in these games just kind of scratching my head until I either figure it out or resignedly look up a hint. The puzzles in Zero Time Dilemma are still pretty good for the most part, but the mystery story and characters are kind of what I'm more interested in here—and Zero Time Dilemma is unfortunately populated with quite a few profoundly unlikable characters. This is in spite of returning characters from the first two games, some of which look a little off in the series' third new art style. The overall storyline definitely falls a little flat for me as well and I even have qualms with the way the different branching story paths are structured. Having said all that, I still liked the game and enjoyed that I got to see more in the Zero Escape universe—but I think we can probably leave it there.
#11: Fatal Fury: King of Fighters (Arcade; March 21st)
I was interesting in trying out Fatal Fury for two reasons. Maybe even three! For one, I knew Terry Bogard (of Fatal Fury fame) was going to be heading to Street Fighter 6 soon. Secondly, City of the Wolves, the first new Fatal Fury game in 20 years, will be coming out next year and I plan on checking it out. On top of all that, I enjoy tracing the lineage of classic game series from time to time—and I already did something similar with Street Fighter a couple years ago. This first Fatal Fury is certainly a hell of a lot better than Street Fighter 1, but I suppose that's to be expected given that this came out about four years later—and in fact, on the tail end of the year Street Fighter II came out. Unlike Street Fighter II's beefy roster, Fatal Fury only features three characters to choose from—Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard, and Joe Higashi. From the very beginning, they have their main special moves that will come to be iconic going forward. Terry has his Burn Knuckle, his Rising Tackle, his Crack Shoot, and Power Wave, which I only remember because these are all now moves in Terry's iteration in Street Fighter 6 as well. Despite the small roster, I feel like it's pretty effective just because the characters all feel pretty memorable and distinct. The controls do feel a tad sluggish by today's standards, but they're certainly a far cry from SF1 and still perfectly playable.
SNK's second major effort takes the form of a 70s martial arts flick featuring Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia. This one's a bit of an oddball for me for a couple of reasons. First, the sprites are monstrously oversized, which I suppose does allow a lot of detail for the characters, but it's little disorienting compared to other fighting games of the era. Secondly, the special move system is incredibly limiting. Instead of just being able to endlessly spam special moves like most other games, you instead have to carefully manage your stamina. If you throw too many fireballs early on, you'll find that you're limited to basic attacks alone. On top of that, the game is quite hard, so it took a significant amount of trial and error to finish the story mode with both Ryo and Robert. As with most fighting games of this era, the final boss ruthlessly reads your inputs, so the strategy ultimately boiled down to finding the right way to exploit the AI instead of playing in a more organic way.
#13: Fatal Fury 2 (Arcade; March 26th)
By the time we hit Fatal Fury 2, we're roughly at parity with Street Fighter 2. The roster of characters expands considerably with new characters like Mai Shiranui (who will become just as iconic as Terry), Kim Kaphwan, Big Bear, Cheng Sinzan, and Jubei Yamada. As I did with all of the main Street Fighter games, I committed to finishing the arcade mode with all the playable characters. With only 8, that didn't seem too monumental a task, but these old arcade fighting games are no joke. The last gauntlet of bosses (akin to the Shadaloo bosses from Street Fighter II) are varying degrees of nonsense. Billy Kane pokes you with his staff from a million miles away. Axel Hawk has impenetrable defense and punishes you for your entire health bar. Laurence Blood (essentially a mustachioed Vega) springs around the stage and absolutely ruins your day. Krauser, the final boss, hurls fireballs high and low much like Sagat. His character model's so tall that it's hard to avoid anything he throws at you. Eventually, I did find a system to get around these quirks and came to enjoy the different strengths of each character. Cheng controls a lot like Blanka in that he hurls himself at his foes in a ball, Jubei is a fairly unique grappler character, Kim is a taekwondo fighter, Big Bear's a wrestler superficially similar to Zangief, and Mai is an agile ninja with a fireball in the form of a hurled fan. The returning three characters from the first game are mostly the same, but the controls seem a bit better across the board.
I played through several Ys games in succession all the way back in 2016. At the time, I was making videos on just about every game I played. The original goal was to catalogue my way through the entire series, but obviously that didn't pan out—and eventually I stopped making videos entirely. The last game I'd played at the time (and made a video on) was The Oath in Felghana, a remake of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. I ended up playing both to compare them, which is certainly a step I wouldn't bother taking today without having a project in mind to motivate me to do so. I was caught up at the time with the idea of moving on to playing all three different versions of Ys IV, but eventually that desire just died out entirely. Eventually, I just played Memories of Celceta, the most recent remake of Ys IV in 2021. It wasn't until last year that I moved on to Ys V, one of the only games in the series that doesn't have a modern rerelease. I discussed that a bit in last year's entry, but now I've come somewhat full circle in that I've now played through Ys VI, fully a good ten years after I initially purchased it on Steam. It's weird to return to it now, since it's sort of an inferior version of what was iterated on with Oath of Felghana. It's still an enjoyable isometric action RPG, but it's just a little more rough around the edges comparatively. The bosses aren't quite as good and the controls aren't quite as tight. Even so, it fulfills my primal urge to play through whole series of games roughly in order, so I'm still glad that I played it.
You might think at this point that this is early on in my SNK/Fatal Fury journey, but Special is actually where I stopped—at least for now. Special is to Fatal Fury 2 as Champion Edition is to Street Fighter 2. It's an update to the existing title by adding in playable characters that were previously only available as opponents. As is typical for characters like these, the playable versions are significantly weaker than their boss counterparts—which is not to say that they're not still quite strong! Billy Kane can still get a lot of mileage out of the insane range of his bo staff, and the others just from having larger character models. This is also the first time I got to play Duck King, who was an opponent in the first Fatal Fury. Like Cheng, he can hurl himself bodily at his opponents, but he's also a more agile character generally, with as strong slide move. I'm sort of curious how he plays in later entries in the series and in King of Fighters. Maybe I'll find out someday.
I really couldn't get enough of romhacks this year—and for this one we decided to really mix it up. On top of Inclement Emerald being a difficulty and rebalancing hack for Pokemon Emerald to bring it up to part with more modern Pokemon balance (except with actual difficulty), we decided to do another Soul Link but also to completely randomize not only every Pokemon's location, but even their types, stat distribution, and movesets. This was the first that I'd completely randomized one of these games and it was an absolute blast. Every time we came across a familiar Pokemon, it was like encountering something brand new. There was no telling what weird type combo and stats it was going to have, so every catch was an interesting scouting experience. One memorable critter I ended up with was a super physically strong ground-type Alakazam with Skill Link and a buffed priority Bone Rush. Absolutely nasty and enough to effortlessly destroy an entire game, but because all enemy Pokemon are random as well, you never know what insane enemy you're going to run into. These hacks are really now my preferred way of interacting with these games. They're honestly a ton of fun.
#17: Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered (PC; April 9th)
At this point, I'm something of a SaGa gremlin. I've played enough of these games that I get the drill by now. The mechanics will be completely impenetrable and you will be given relatively little in the way of direction. The gimmick that sets Minstrel Song apart from some of the other titles is that you have a variety of skills that can used on the overworld for traversal or simply for convenience. There are skills for lurking, for climbing, and for harvesting various resources. The combat is largely the same as other games in the series, defined primarily by the skill glimmering system where you learn new combat abilities by simply using your moves. Each of the many characters in the game have their own obfuscated skill trees that determine how likely they are to glimmer specific abilities and with which skills they are capable of doing so. You could look these things up are you could just experiment through trial and error. Putting together your party based on who has access to what skills and magic as well as what quests you can undertake with them adds an interesting party-building and planning aspect to the game. There's also something of a time limit in place in that your Challenge Rank increases not only as you complete combat encounters, but also quests. This makes planning ahead important to make sure you don't miss too many quests (and their rewards) along the way. It's also worth noting that the combination of the doll-like graphics for the main characters and the bizarrely stiff voice acting choices (presumably enforced by the voice director) lends this 2005-era game an unearthly quality. I went with Claudia as my protagonist, who was voiced by Karen Strassman, who I recognized more for her portrayal of Aigis in Persona 3 from the following year. Her portrayal here is similarly robotic, despite her character not having any real need to sound that way.
I started playing this game in Early Access and completed all the content that was available at the time. Since, I've revisited it to try out the full release. It's a pretty simple but addictive game in the vein of something like Vampire Survivors, but it's different enough to feel unique. As you might guess by the game's name, it's all about talent trees. As you defend four lanes with one of the game's character classes, you rapidly level up and progress through a massive pseudorandom talent tree and grow exponentially stronger. With a combination of luck, skill, and effective talent choices, you can get through 20 waves of progressively stronger enemies. It's a relatively well-worn formula, but the combination of elements makes it work pretty well for me.
#19: Oblivion Override (PC; April 22nd)
Although I don't remember exactly what prompted it, I really got a hankering to play "something like Mega Man/Mega Man X" so I went hunting for options. Oblivion Override is one such option, which admittedly does share some superficial similarities with X in particular. It could loosely be described as a hybrid of Mega Man X and Dead Cells, which is a pretty appealing combo in my book. It doesn't quite reach the depth of Dead Cells, but it feels really nice to play, it's fairly challenging, and there's a decent amount of build variety in terms of the different mechs you can unlock and the modifiers you can earn during gameplay. I finished a few runs of it and had a good time, even if it wasn't the most memorable game I played this year.
What I appreciate about Gunlocked is that it is very diligent about picking an aesthetic and sticking with it. It's also a very reasonably scoped game. Unlike most games inspired by Vampire Survivors, which are stuffed with lots of extraneous content, Gunlocked feels very trim, but this is to its credit. You can complete most of what the game has to offer and have a good time without feeling overwhelmed or burnt out trying to complete everything. Maybe this is a problem not everyone has. Either way, Gunlocked looks like a 90s arcade game in a pleasing way and gets a lot of mileage from its space shooter/bullet hell combat by giving the player the opportunity to experiment with a variety of weapons and modifier combos to unlock various hidden synergies. You may not get 100s of hours out of this one, but it's entertaining every step of the way.
#21: Etrian Odyssey III HD (PC; May 11th)
My friend and I kept looking for new and unusual options for games to play collaboratively this year. I'd been wanting to revisit Etrian Odyssey for some time, so I recommended the recent HD release of Etrian Odyssey III. It made sense to go with this in particular since It's so far the only newer version of the third game, whereas EO and EO2 got extensive remakes on the 3DS. The initial plan with this one was to have us both draft members of our guild and then collaboratively put a party together. Afterward, we would assign one person at a time to control navigation and combat and the other would draw the maps through Parsec. We stuck to this for the most part while occasionally trading off. There's not much I can say about Etrian Odyssey that I haven't already said on this blog quite a bit, but suffice it to say that I love this series. I love building parties, I love drawing maps, and I love how effective and useful buffs, debuffs, and status effects are in combat, even when it comes to bosses. I would play a million of these games—and by now, I pretty much have.
I've clearly transitioned to playing the vast majority of games on PC this year, but Vanillaware is still stubbornly retaining console exclusivity for the time being. I begrudgingly got this one on PS5 because it may never be available anywhere else. I'm glad I did though, because this game is excellent. Of the new releases this year that I actually played, it's either my favorite or my second favorite. Of all things to come back in 2024, I can't believe it's basically Ogre Battle. Of course, this isn't an Ogre Battle game, but it might as well be. It pretty much recreates the structure of those games entirely and renders it in Vanillaware's gorgeous 2D aesthetic. Like Ogre Battle, Unicorn Overlord is a pesudo real-time strategy RPG in which the bulk of the strategy is in the loadout of your squads and your preparation prior to unit deployment on the map. This is true at least in case of combat, which primarily occurs automatically when you approach enemy squads. The other element of strategy is in how you move your squads across the map. You'll need to capture enemy bases to establish footholds into their territory and to more effectively manage your squads' stamina. This is one of those games where you can spend hours just tweaking the composition of each of your squads—which, by the way, will be manned almost entirely by recruitable characters instead of generics, much in the vein of Fire Emblem. There's even a robust conversation system where you can build bonds with your massive roster of characters. Unlike Fire Emblem, it is possible to recruit generic classes, but it's seldom necessary given the sheer number of story characters they provide for you over the course of the game. There's a lot I can say about this game but I'll keep writing for hours if I'm not careful. In summary, I loved it and it served to validate my purchase of a PS5 a bit more—even if I still would have preferred to play it on PC if possible!
#23: Chrono Ark (PC; May 22nd)
When I was hunting for Mega Man-adjacent games, I picked this one up as well. As it turns out, Gravity Circuit is much closer to the platonic ideal of a Mega Man-like. Of course, the major difference here is that it's more focused on melee combat, but it still really nails that classic feel. The controls are very tight and fluid, so the precise movements required to consistently avoid boss attacks feels achievable, although still difficult. Throw in a great, energetic soundtrack and you have a rock solid action platformer. It's actually surprising there aren't more examples of really good Mega Man-inspired games like this out there. I've played some others, but they either don't really have the feel I'm looking for, or lean too much into other genres. Oblivion Override is an example of the latter, for instance, but it was of course still quite fun.
#25: Mortal Kombat 1 (PC: May 31st)
I wanted to have experience with what I considered to be the "big three" of modern fighting games. In retrospect, Mortal Kombat 1 no longer really feels like it would qualify as one of those big three now that we're well past release. I think SF6 and Tekken 8 are definitely still there, but that third game seems a tad nebulous to me. Is it it Guilty Gear Strive? Granblue? Maybe it will be filled by City of the Wolves or Virtua Fighter. Maybe 2XKO will topple the list entirely. It's hard to say. As for MK1, it's the same as it always has been as far as I'm concerned—which is to say it's a silly, gory fighting game with a fun and ridiculous story mode. Although I messed around with combo trials for a while, I never quite got a handle over the absurdly stiff controls. Calling in assist characters from Mortal Kombat history seems interesting on paper, but doing so within a combo is extraordinarily clumsy—and I'm not the only one that thinks so. For what should be an entry-level fighter, it's strange that the combos and inputs in MK1 are among the strictest and most rigid of anything out there. It's a bizarre combination. Either way, I had a fun time with the story mode, but I'm definitely done with this game, as are a lot of folks in the competitive community, as it turns out.
Golden Idol Mysteries: The Spider of Lanka (PC; August 19th)
Golden Idol Mysteries: The Lemurian Vampire (PC; August 25th)
Ah, here's where the numbers become a tad nebulous. I decided not to include DLC in the total number this time (save for one notable exception), although I've waffled back and forth over this over the years, especially considering it breaks the chronology of the list. Either way, I guess I'm sticking to it for now. I clearly was in the mood to experiment with puzzle games this year. Not all of those experiments were successful. I loved Void Stranger, for instance, but I struggled to engage with Baba Is You, which is why you won't find it on this list. Now, Case of the Golden Idol, I absolutely loved. Logic puzzles are consistently my favorite puzzles. Golden Idol affords you the opportunity to slowly uncover a decades-long story set in the 18th century. You are an observer, piecing together the events based on what you can see in individual scenes. You have the skeletal structure of what occurred and you must fill in the blank with terms you find by interacting with the scene in a point-and-click fashion. Each scene builds on the next as you learn about the history of the Golden Idol and of the illustrious Cloudsley family. Eventually, you'll need to put together absolutely everything you've learned to uncover the ultimate mystery of the game, which is an extraordinarily satisfying process. the DLC itself is far from extraneous either, since it fleshes out the backstory of a character you only learn a little about in the initial stages of the base game. It serves to enrich your understanding of the overall story and features some of the whole collection's most complex and difficult scenarios.
Ch. 1: Onikakushi (June 14th)
Ch. 2: Watanagashi (June 23rd)
Ch. 3: Tatarigoroshi (June 30th)
Ch. 4: Himatsubushi (August 2nd)
Ch. 5: Meakashi (August 9th)
Ch. 6: Tsumihoroboshi (August 19th)
Ch. 7: Minagoroshi (August 28th)Ch. 8: Matsuribayashi (September 13th)
This visual novel was the biggest reason why I struggled with the actual number of games I finished this year. The first and most obvious reason is that it's split up into eight whole parts, but of course they're all part of the same story. At minimum, one of these chapters is several hours, but the longest took me about twenty hours or so to read in its entirety. It felt excessive to count each of these chapters as separate games, even though I know they were all released separately—and perhaps more importantly, they're separate Steam purchases as well. The very first chapter is available for free, which is why I gave the story a chance in the first place. Secondly, it's hard to even call these games except for the very last chapter, which features significantly more interactivity. For the vast majority of the time you're reading these, it's just that. It's reading. You're witnessing the events as they play out. So, for that reason, I felt it was appropriate just to count it as one entry on this list, although the dates at which I completed the chapters are preserved here for posterity.
Let's actually talk about Higurashi though, yeah? I've definitely been on a VN/narrative game kick the past couple of years. Everyone seems to have their own example of a must-read in this genre and seldom do they acknowledge the weaknesses in their lauded choices. Higurashi came highly recommended from a variety of sources, and I can see why. It's mysterious, it's intriguing, it can sometimes be funny, cozy, pastoral, engrossing. However, it also has an extremely slow start and the pacing issues don't really let up until several chapters in. There are thousands and thousands of words devoted to describing, in exhausting detail, the various games the main characters play in their school club. Sure, these games serve to develop and flesh out these characters, but the amount of time spent on these moments is excessive. On top of that, there's an extremely unfortunate amount of sexualization of the female characters in this story, which is especially concerning given their age. Some are high school age, and others are far younger. Sure, the protagonist is presumably a high school kid himself, but as a grown man reading this, it certainly makes me uncomfortable. I know part of this is a 2005 thing and part of it is a Japanese culture thing, but I have to mention it because it's impossible not to discuss as a notable caveat for Higurashi.
If you're able to ignore pacing, occasionally sloppy writing, and some really gross tropes—you're left with an intriguing mystery story that oscillates wildly between cozy small-town slice-of-life to legitimate horror. It's a fascinating story that I felt compelled to keep reading despite my many gripes with it, so I consider it worth the investment for that reason.
#28: Slay the Princess (PC; June 30th)
I wanted to play Slay the Princess ever since I saw Abby Howard's excellent artwork for it, but I kept putting it off. I needed a break from three straight chapters of Higurashi so I took a detour into another narrative game to read before bed. I actually didn't end up spending as much time with it as you theoretically could. It's structured in such a way that your choices can result in a tremendous number of different narrative paths, but by the time I'd reached the end on a few of those paths, I felt satisfied enough with it and wanted to move on. On some level, I feel like I didn't engage with as much as I should, given the amount of content I didn't specifically see. To be honest, I felt like the cyclical Groundhog Day-esque structure was already starting to wear thin for me. There are games in which repeating the same events over and over doesn't bother me, but after I'd tried out a few options involving Slaying or Not Slaying the titular Princess and reached a few endings, my curiosity was sated.
Okay, so this is technically DLC, but I'm including it here because it's huge and might as well be its own new game. Also, I beat the original game two years ago, so it doesn't feel like a duplicate like, for instance, the Golden Idol DLC might. Also, the Game Awards nominated it for Game of the Year, so if it's a full game to them, it's a full game to me! We're all Geoff Keighley devotees here, right? (Please takes these words with the grain of salt they were assuredly delivered with.) Anyhow, it's absolutely incredible that a game as chock-full of content as Elden Ring received an expansion with this kind of scope. Despite some notable gripes I have with Elden Ring, I still fully acknowledge that it's an amazing game with tremendous scope even by default. Shadow of the Erdtree is potentially 40 more hours of content, or even more if you're especially thorough or if you're especially struggling. The struggle is understandable too, because a good chunk of the 40+ new bosses are extremely tough, even for those of us who have ludicrously strong builds from the base game. I was expecting something more along the lines of a Ringed City from Dark Souls 3, where you'd get to explore a few areas and fight a handful of memorable bosses. I won't say every DLC boss is memorable, but with fully 16 new remembrance bosses and several sprawling dungeons, it certainly feels like a brand new game to me.
#30: Tales of Maj'Eyal (PC; July 21st)
Tales of Maj'Eyal: Embers of Rage (July 26th)
I spent about two-and-a-half months playing Tales of Maj'Eyal, a traditional roguelike originally released in 2012. I've owned it since 2020, but the first time I played it for more than 8 minutes was this year. Once I really started playing, I had a hard time stopping. I fell down an endless rabbit hole with this game for a while—to the point that I started to find myself unable to see an exit! I loved this game and I'd still be playing it now regularly if not for the fact that I like to play a lot of games and have a broad range of experiences. When I play ToME, it's easy to play it and only it—in much the same way one might get sucked into an MMO. I've had similar phases with Final Fantasy XIV, for example. ToME is just endlessly replayable and addictive because there's a huge variety of different builds to try and because the difficulty is so punishing. Getting through an entire run is an absurd gauntlet that requires a mixture of luck, vigilance, and strategy. Case in point, one of my rarest achievements on Steam is simply for beating the main campaign in roguelike mode, which 0.9% of players have. That's just literally finishing a run. There are far more difficult tasks and far more difficulties beyond Roguelike mode, so that's saying something.
#31: Nidus (PC; August 6th)
After devoting a truly ludicrous amount of time to ToME, I really wanted to branch out and try some shorter arcade-style games. More on that soon, but the first I finished of these is a really interesting twin-stick shooter with a surreal psychedelic aesthetic in which you assume control over a galactic wasp and flower. You control both simultaneously. The game wants you to do this with a controller using the analog sticks, but I had a lot more success using a mouse and keyboard, personally. The flower functions as your slow, lumbering mothership that must be protected, while the wasp moves much more swiftly around the screen within a field determined by the flower. Instead of just firing projectiles, the wasp functions more like a slingshot in that it hurls itself violently into the insectile space monsters that blanket the levels. That's not to say you don't have access to projectiles, but they function a little differently. In a show of synergy between the wasp and the flower, you can fly over little energy crystals in space and deposit them back at the mothership, who then releases it in a nova of projectiles based on how many you collected. It's also necessary for the wasp to return the flower to regain strength after a certain period of time, anyway, so you'll find this occurring naturally even if you don't specifically intend it. It's a really clever gameplay loop for a shmup that I found very appealing—and I haven't heard a ton of people talking about it. I'd definitely recommend it!
Speaking of shmups, I played a few of those this year. Next up on the list is Angel at Dusk, a top down space shooter that tells the story of a far-flung future in which angels have become the only remaining entities. There's a complex story doled out in between auto-scrolling levels against enormous otherworldly entities and huge waves of other aliens. I'm not a genre expert as far as these games go, but it feels safe to say this is much more on the bullet hell side of the spectrum. A big part of the strategy is in simply dodging the sheer number of bullets on screen, but sometimes you'll have to use one of your limited resource of bombs to clear the screen.
I've been very slowly working on getting through some of the long-running series I started several years ago. Ys 5 was last year and Ys 6 was earlier this year. I've actually owned Ys Seven on PSP for many, many years, but I either never played it for a single second or I played it for a few minutes and abandoned it. That was well before I'd played any game in the series whatsoever, so it's interesting to return to it now after having played through all the games leading up to it. It's not surprising to note that this game would have worked just fine as a standalone experience, especially since it's such a big departure from the series gameplay so far. I got a bit of a preview of what this game would feel like with Ys: Memories of Celceta, which is of course a party-based action RPG, unlike the bulk of the series which is just Adol himself. Ys Origin featured a variety of other playable characters, but you only ever controlled any of them individually. In Seven, you end up with a full 7-member roster that you assemble into a 3-person team. Within the team, you're encouraged to swap between the characters to exploit the weaknesses of enemy monsters. It isn't just an extraneous feature, but crucial to gameplay unless you really just want to spend way more time than you have to killing enemies with weapons they resist. Each of the characters has a huge variety of different combat skills they learn from various weapons, so there's plenty of variety in the combat. I would say the combat is somewhat button-mashy, but the weakness system still adds much needed depth. The music and art are solid, the plot doesn't do a lot for me, but the gameplay is quite solid. This is the very definition of just a really solid action RPG.
#34: Cocoon (PC; August 9th)
Jeppe Carlsen was responsible for designing Limbo and Inside when he worked for Playdead—and he directed the team that designed this game with his new company, Geometric Interactive. I liked Limbo and really loved Inside, so I was definitely interested in trying out a new game he was involved in. The DNA from those games is evident in Cocoon, particularly in how concise and propulsive the gameplay is. It's the kind of game you could theoretically clear in one playthrough if you're diligent, but you could also break it into two to three cozy sessions as well, depending on your preferences. It's broadly a puzzle game, but what makes it so interesting to me is that a lot of the fun is in just figuring out what the game even is. There's no dialogue or text in the game, so you can really only infer what's going on based on the game's visual storytelling and audio design, both of which are excellent. The soundtrack is phenomenal, but even just the contextual in-game audio is extremely effective at helping to tell that story. It's the kind of game where I found myself remarking "oh, that's cool" and oh,' wow" over and over in the span of about six hours. It's very refreshing to play a tidy, extremely tightly-paced game like this from time to time. In some ways, I imagine they must be more difficult to develop.
So, I was ready to start this section with an apology that I don't really remember why I suddenly started playing Genesis games, but actually, now I remember. I was listening to a podcast covering retro games at the time, and it really put me in the mood to revisit a console that I spent some time with as a kid but never became an intimately familiar with as the Super Nintendo. And what better stories franchise to revisit than Sonic? I've played all of these games to a certain extent, especially the second one, but I don't specifically recall ever having finished them before. I just didn't make a concerted effort to finish games as a kid like I do now, even with games I really liked. As for Sonic 1, it's a perfectly fine action platformer, but it hasn't aged tremendously well. Sonic 2 made the spin-dash famous and it does wonders for the game's pacing. Sonic is ostensibly about speed, but you don't actually move all that fast in this first game, but perhaps more importantly, you're so frequently stopped by obstacles in your way. The underwater level is especially troubling and not especially fun!
#36: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sega Genesis; August 12th)
I didn't mention this already, but it's well known that these games have absolutely incredible soundtracks. In fact, it's probably the best thing about the first game. It's certainly not a controversial take to consider Sonic 2 to be where the series really hits its stride. It has a great variety of balanced and memorable levels, a slew of fantastic tunes, and a much better sensation of speed thanks to the addition of the spin dash. I found that the first two levels (and especially Chemical Zone) were still firmly burned into my mind from repeatedly playing them over and over as a kid. The further I got into the game, the less familiar it became. Like, Oil Ocean Zone? What the heck? Either way, it's a blast all the way through. Despite this being essentially the perfect Sonic game, it's not true that every level is perfect. I'm not the hugest fan of Casino Night Zone or Wing Fortress Zone, for instance, but these are minor gripes with what is otherwise an essentially perfect Genesis classic.
So, my original plan was to play vanilla Sonic 3 and then play through the Sonic and Knuckles content (including maybe some of the other game combos) but that didn't end up panning out. I did play through all of vanilla Sonic 3 though, and it's... fine. It's fine! It has a lot of the same elements that make Sonic 2 work, but I like the levels a bit less (and in the case of Carnival Night Zone, significantly less) and the music isn't quite as good. I'd say it's better than Sonic 1 primarily because it has a spin-dash, but the base game with no Knuckles ultimately isn't as fun or as memorable for me. I need to go back and play Sonic and Knuckles again one of these days. Maybe I'll go through another retro binge in 2025.
#38: Phantasy Star (Sega Master System; August 16th)
I got it in my head that it might be fun to check out more of the Genesis library that I'd missed as a kid, but that took me down an even deeper rabbit hole. What if I could go back even further and play games from a console I'd never experienced whatsoever? Yeah, why not? Starting with Phantasy Star seemed like a no-brainer, since it's one of the very few classic JRPG series I've never played. As I was playing it, I was mentally comparing it to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, to which it compares pretty favorably, if I'm being honest. I can generally enjoy a very dated game when taking into account the time in which it was made, so I had a great time with Phantasy Star. It has a lovely chiptune soundtrack, interesting first-person dungeon crawling, Dragon Quest-style combat, and a unique sci-fi aesthetic that you didn't see that often then or even really now. I will say, though, those dungeons are insanely convoluted and there is absolutely no in-game map. It felt very rustic and interesting to be relying on ASCII maps on GameFAQs to navigate them. Despite what one might consider the tedium of this game, I honestly enjoyed every second of it. It's just pure retro simplicity and it still works for me. The game expects you to spend time leveling up and grinding for money to progress or else you'll be destroyed by enemies—and that's such an uncommon thing now. Maybe that's a good thing, but it's actually kind of a refreshing change of pace to feel like I need to level in order to progress. It makes my character progression feel more meaningful and important. Every stat point makes the next challenges possible to conquer, which is really just one of the most basic reasons I've always enjoyed RPGs.
I spent some time doing some research on what are considered to be the "best" titles for Master System, but it's a bit difficult to get good information on this, because I wanted to focus on games that were unique to the platform. Almost every worthwhile game has better version elsewhere, which may well even be true for Dragon Crystal, but since the other version is on the Game Gear, I thought it would be an interesting one to try. After all, it's a roguelike, which I found to be really intriguing, since I haven't played any other roguelikes older than maybe the late 90s. The game itself is more or less exactly what you would expect. You explore randomly generated levels, pick up mystery loot that you have to use or equip before you figure out what it does, and if you die, it's game over. You start over from the beginning. The game is perfectly serviceable; there's only one reason I still find myself thinking about it even now. There's very little music in this game, but the music for the first two sets of levels absolutely rules. I swear, the music for the first set of levels sounds like some sort of chiptune proto pop punk. You can almost hear the lyrics. Impossibly, the music accompanying the second set of levels is even better. It's this absurdly catchy adventure tune that I've listened to an embarrassing number of times out of context this year. Sometimes the music from a game elevates it beyond its simplistic gameplay. Unfortunately, the track for the last set of levels is comparatively quite dull, but they can't all be winners.
I'd already played a couple of shmups earlier in the month and I wanted to branch out and try some of the genre's classics. Maybe Power Strike (which is actually just the first entry in the Aleste series) isn't the most traditional starting point, but since I was already investigating the Master System library, it made sense to check out. I knew from the very beginning that I wasn't going to have the patience to tackle this game 100% legitimately, so I abused save states fairly liberally in order to get through it. Even then, it wasn't exactly easy. Getting hit is absurdly punishing since you lose all of your powerups. And those powerups are extremely crucial in reasonably getting through a level. The powerups themselves are quite simple and are collected just by flying over them. You can power up your basic shot twice so that it shoots up to three shots. You then have a secondary weapon. You'll need to remember which ones are the good ones, since the powerups just show up as numbers from 1 to 8. Only a few of them are actually useful, so you'll need to look out for a good powerup and try to keep it as long as you can.
As I started to play the very first entry in the lauded Wonder Boy series, I had two thoughts. One was "wow, I've actually played this before." (The second thought was that I also played the remake of Wonder Boy III a few years ago.) In fact, I did play the arcade version of Wonder Boy as a very young child. A friend of mine's dad had the arcade cabinet in his basement—and I have very hazy memories of playing it that came into sharper focus as I played this Master System version. To be honest, it probably would have just made more sense to play the Arcade version, but by the time I considered that, I was already quite deep into the game and decided to just power through it. Platformers aren't exactly my favorite genre, but as far as they go, this game is perfectly fine. The controls are solid, which is good, because many of the jumps require a high level of precision. Every level has an extremely simple and repetitive music loop, so the only real thing to focus on here is the simple act of hurling tomahawks at foes, making precise jumps, and occasionally hopping onto a skateboard for some reason. I would consider it quite challenging by today's standards, so conquering that difficulty at least kept me entertained. I imagine I'd be much more a fan of the later games in the series, which feature more adventure elements.
I mentioned earlier that it occurred to me mid-way through my play of Wonder Boy that it might make more sense simply to make the Arcade version. Before I could repeat that mistake, I decided to move on to playing the original arcade version of R-Type another supremely challenging shmup. This is actually one series I have a small amount of experience with already. I own the Super Nintendo cartridge of Super R-Type and played it many times as a kid. Like so many games I played as a child, I never finished it—but in this case, that's very understandable. R-Type is hard in a somewhat different way. There's a significant number of enemies on screen, sure, but it's not at all a fast-moving, frenetic game like other shmups. It's actually fairly slow and calculating in comparison, but no less difficult due to extremely cramped environments. It's crucial to plan ahead around the terrain and approaching enemies. Needless to say, I made liberal use of save states once again to make my way through this one. I'm not sure my patience would have kept up otherwise. Aside from the pace, what sets this one apart for me is how powerups work. Your ship gets access to a detachable pod that shoots projectiles on its own. You can either dock with it and bolster your forward shots, attach it to the rear to protect you from behind, or even jettison it entirely so it can fire shots in a completely different spot. When attached to the front of the ship, it also functions as a bit of a shield for enemies that get close. It adds an interesting dynamic beyond just the standard moving and shooting.
#43: Darius (Arcade: August 21st)
At this point, it's clear that I've gone through a series of phases. My Genesis phase gave way to a Master System phase, which gave way to a shmup phase. I was now deep into that third phase and had made grand plans to play every popular shmup I've ever heard of. I knew very little about Darius prior to playing this game, aside from maybe playing a few minutes of Darius Twin on SNES. The principle defining feature of Darius is just how long the gameplay screen is. On a real arcade console, I understand there are special cabinets with extremely wide screens. For that reason, I actually found it challenging to accommodate on a standard computer monitor. I wanted to experiment with spreading it across multiple monitors but I didn't have a good setup for it at the time. Another feature that stood out to me is the cumulative powerups. The longer you survive, the more you can pick up more and more of the same kind of powerup and they get better and better and evolve over time. I didn't find it as visually appealing as R-Type, but the lengthy landscapes were certainly interesting.
In retrospect, the Sega-developed Fantasy Zone is what caused my Arcade detour in the first place. It made sense at the time to play the Master System version of Fantasy Zone initially. I figured it must have been the official version considering it was a first-party Sega game. What I didn't really think about is that this was an era when Sega made a ton of arcade games as well. I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time on the Master System version before deciding to play the Arcade version instead, which had better graphics, sound, controls—just about superior in every way. It's also the most different of all of the shmups I played as part of this exercise, with its vibrantly cartoony graphics, folksy melodies, and the method of upgrading being tied to an in-game shop. It also has a full free range of movement, instead of scrolling vertically or horizontally. A big part of the strategy in Fantasy Zone is in not getting hit as usual, but also in what order you purchase the various upgrades—and which you skip completely. For instance, if you make your ship too fast, it might actually make the game a lot harder due to the lack of control.
#45: Raiden (Arcade; August 23rd)
The Great Shmup Marathon of 2024 ended with Raiden, a much more explicitly military example of the genre. Instead of aliens or monsters, you're mostly tasked with taking out other aircraft, some of which are massive airships, but you're generally dealing with bombs and missiles instead of helix lasers. Evidently you're still fighting aliens here, but the graphics and presentation are generally more down-to-Earth compared to the surreal space action of some of these other games. I would say it was my least favorite of the ones I tried and maybe also the most difficult. I made pretty regular use of save-scumming in all of these games, but I had to do so to an excessive degree in Raiden because I frequently felt like I couldn't dodge bullet patterns for more than five or six seconds at a time.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (September 22nd)
I've always been one of those people for years that have admired the fun other people were having with Monster Hunter and never really had that opportunity to dive in and start enjoying it. I owned Monster Hunter World for PS4 and played it for a few hours and just never got into it. It felt like it was taking too long and I really wasn't engaging with the weapon I chose. (Lance just really isn't for me.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, playing it with a friend (my regular co-op partner) radically changed the experience for me. The early hours of the game are still a rough adjustment as you're still learning how to play, but things quickly get a lot more fun once you take the time to learn a weapon and really become acclimated to the game's systems. Despite World ostensibly being designed to be an onramp for newer players, it's still not what I'd call accessible. Many mechanics are poorly explained, the UI is not great, and when you're not that good at the game yet, things just seem to take way too long. Once you get going, though, it's extremely fun. I love the monster designs and I love learning their unique attack patterns. I love optimizing the way you use your chosen weapon and planning out a build. Everything feeds into each other in an extremely satisfying way, because you start out by learning how your weapon plays, then you intuit what stats and skills would be helpful for that playstyle. As you take down new monsters, you get an idea of what gear is available and what skills you're looking for—so that then dictates what you hunt for going forward so you can put together your ideal build. It's just such an addictive and satisfying gameplay loop.
I went through several phases for weapons choices throughout my Monster Hunter journey. I spent the bulk of the base game playing bow and got very comfortable with dodge dancing from shot to shot—but I felt like the damage fell off dramatically by the time I hit Iceborne. I understand that bow scales extremely hard with your gear, but I never felt like I could get strong enough gear to make it compare to other weapons. As a result, I switched to Insect Glaive for the majority of Iceborne, which I really fell in love with. I did damage a lot more easily for one thing, but I also found the style really inventive and engaging. Marking various monster parts to collect buffs to power up your glaive and then vaulting wildly into the air to unleash a slew of aerial attacks never got old. On top of that, the fact that you're essentially working in concert with your Kinsect to attack and you can customize the type of bug you have, what status effects it applies, what element it is, how quickly it moves, and that moving slowly can actually be better in certain builds—it's just great. I always felt like I was making interesting decisions on top of being engaged with the actual action of combat as well. I'm certainly looking forward to Wilds now, which wasn't even on my radar beforehand.
I mentioned earlier that Yakuza 5 was likely the last PS4 game I was going to play, which so far is true, because I decided to switch to PC for Yakuza 6, despite technically owning it on console as well. I just have a much more comfortable and easy setup for PC at this point, and I like to take advantage of enhanced graphics and performance whenever possible. Finally, I get to see the "Real Yakuza use a controller" message I've heard so much about. I was a little apprehensive about this one because I never hear a ton of positive reception to it compared to other entries in the series. I also had mixed feelings about returning to a Kiryu solo game after two full games chock-full of alternate protagonists. Although 4 and 5 are messy, bloated games, I liked them both a whole lot. Yakuza 6 I liked less. Although, I did still like it! The plot is still interesting, I'm still invested in Kiryu and his fate, and the crew of characters you meet in Hiroshima in particular are fantastic. On the other hand, the combat is not only dull, but it feels even more "off" than usual. They've made some changes to the format in a way that simultaneously made Kiryu's combat style feel unfamiliar but also less fluid. I've lost count of how many times I've knocked enemies down and then stomped on them with a Heat Action in previous entries, but that ability has for some reason been completely removed. Instead, you just sort of awkwardly lunge at downed opponents with a Triangle press, and sometimes you completely whiff. You can now hit downed enemies with basic attacks, which I guess is the trade-off in that scenario. It just doesn't feel very good, even in comparison to previous games, which is saying something. On top of all that, the soundtrack feels like a bit of a step down from 5, which was chock-full of memorable tunes. I'm only so critical of it because I otherwise really like this series—and there's still plenty to enjoy here, but most of that is from the main story, which actually isn't perfect either. The way Haruka is treated in this story and is almost entirely stripped of agency is upsetting. There's also a bit of a rug pull much later on in in the game that was very predictable but still disappointing. I'm definitely mixed on this one, but I'm still glad I played it so I have the context for future Like a Dragon games, even those that are less Kiryu-centric.
Remember all those romhacks I played earlier in the year? Learning about a piece of software called Archipelago made me return to them with a vengeance. To give context to this one, I'll need to explain the randomizer itself as well as the unique way in which I played it collaboratively with my friend. First of all, Worlds Collide is a randomizer/overhaul of Final Fantasy VI for SNES that puts you on the airship from the very beginning of the game. You're floating just outside of Narshe with a randomized starting party. It's your choice how many you start with—in my case, I decided to start with two. I ended up with Cyan and Strago initially. Under normal circumstances, you simply visit areas that are open to you based on the characters that are in your party. With Cyan and Strago, I have access to places like Doma, Thamasa, and dungeons that are linked to them narratively. In those areas, treasures you find are randomized among other treasure, but when you defeat an important boss, you're rewarded with an important key item. In some cases, that key "item" is a party member or an esper.
This is where Archipelago comes in. Archipelago is a program that allows you to link two games randomized games together and shuffle their iitem pools together as well. What makes this so interesting and intriguing to me is that the games you shuffle together can be completely different games, or even multiple games. Just as an example, I can tell you that my co-op partner played a randomized Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green. Any item he found could be an item I needed to progress—and vice versa. In practice, this meant that I ended up waiting an improbably long time to get a third party member since we were unlucky and he was having a hard time finding an item that corresponded to one of my party members. Meanwhile, I was traveling around the world trying to find key items that might unlock new points of progression for him so he could help me in turn. It's a really really cool idea that I'm glad exists. In fact, we continued straight into another Archipelago run where he played Ocarina of Time while I made the questionable decision to juggle the first three Mega Man X games. The only reason those games aren't listed here is because I've played through those games many times over the course of my life and they're the vanilla versions of the games aside from the items being shuffled around. Either way, it was a fun time and I'd love to do it again once support for new games is added.
Next in my series of "before bed games" is the unofficial follow-up to the Zero Escape series. I expressed some disappointment with Zero Time Dilemma, so I was a little apprehensive heading into this one, especially when the introductory portions of the game didn't completely draw me in. Fortunately, I warmed up to it quite quickly and ended up becoming so much more engrossed in it than I ever expected. I found the plot to be consistently interesting, the characters memorable and likable (even when deliberately written to be annoying), and I also really loved the soundtrack. I also like the art and presentation a lot! The likability of the characters is really refreshing to see after Zero Time Dilemma, where I had such a rough time engaging with anyone at all. I never really cared about what happened to anyone, but when bad things inevitably happen to characters in AI, it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel invested in finding a story thread where things go better. I knew I was going to complete every different story path regardless of how I felt about the game, but I'm very glad that I was always looking forward to doing so, much like how I felt in the first two Zero Escape games. If I'm being honest, though, I think I like The Somnium Files more than those games. A lot of it has to do with the characters, but it's also partly because I don't have to invest so much brainpower into tough puzzles. I'll freely admit that the "investigation" segments in this game, which mostly amount to trial and error and figuring out the right sequence to investigate your subject's dream—they aren't that great. At first, I didn't like them much at all, but once I got used to them, I didn't mind them. I wouldn't say I enjoyed them, per se, but they didn't detract from my experience. Even so, I was always looking forward to more story, more dialogue. This is a great example of a game where it's just very cozy to spend time talking to the game's characters, even outside the context of propelling the plot forward.
One game you won't see on this list is Etrian Odyssey Nexus, because, well, I finished it in 2019. However, I've been replaying it this year, which put me in the mood to finally play the last remaining Etrian Odyssey title I'd never played. I'm a fiend of these mapmaking dungeon crawlers so I knew I'd get around to this one eventually. I may have subconsciously put it off a bit since the remake of EO1 wasn't necessarily my favorite. I have mixed feelings about the grimoire system, which returns in Fafnir Knight. In brief, grimoires drop from enemies randomly and allow you to customize your characters with either skills normally only usable by monsters or give you the option to exceed the normal maximum rank of your own class's skills. I still generally prefer the subclass systems from other games in this series, but it's not a dealbreaker by any stretch of the imagination. In the original EO2, I rolled through most of the game thanks to the absurdly powerful Dark Hunter and it's extremely damaging counter abilities. It might seem logical to avoid the Dark Hunter this time around since they're much more evenly balanced, but instead I fielded two in my party—but without the counter ability this time. I built one of them around ailments and the other around binds. I used a Beast (which is basically a werewolf) as my tank and then rounded out the group with Troubadour and Hexer. My most recent Nexus run was very ailment-focused, so I wanted to do something kind of similar here. It ended up working quite well. I experimented with Hexer's Life Trade skill for the bulk of my healing, which was a somewhat risky strategy that still ended up panning out. I had to let my party get to low health to get the best benefit from it, so I got a lot of mileage out of Troubadour's Barbarian March to increase maximum health. Anyway, these games rule. I'll ramble on for thousands of words if I'm not careful.
I'm occasionally looking for reasons to validate my PS5 purchase and I thought this might do the trick. I legitimately enjoyed the Astro's Playroom game demo/proof of concept that shipped with the PS5 initially, so I was on board with this full game release from the get-go. It delivers on the promise of that demo in just about every way you can expect. It's a 3D platformer that is just exceptionally solid in a very Mario Galaxy kind of way. It also actually makes use of the PS5 controller's haptic feedback in a way that most games simply do not. Although I enjoyed this game a lot and consider it extremely well made, it did remind me that 3D platformer isn't necessarily my favorite genre. I kept finding myself remarking "wow, this game is really good" but realizing I wasn't feeling very much in the mood to play it for long periods of time. It lacks the crunchiness that I tend to look for in games. I'd like if I could enjoy breezier experiences like this more, but I think I'm at at an age now where I have to accept that certain genres aren't for me, even when I can acknowledge they are very good.
Despite the fact that I've played and enjoyed every Persona title, most Shin Megami Tensei games and a whole huge pile of other Atlus titles, somehow the impending release of Metaphor caught me by surprise. It felt like I'd just heard about it and suddenly it was coming out. Well, to be accurate, I first heard about Project Re Fantasy quite a few years ago, but when Metaphor was officially announced it fell off my radar for a while. I've internalized that big projects from the Persona team are few and far between these days, so I just don't sit in silent anticipation for them very often. But man, is it a nice breath of fresh air to play Metaphor, which is basically just "Fantasy Persona." You've got the power of friendship, you've got that appealing art style, great turn-based combat, life simulation elements, and a cast of lovable characters. What's particularly appealing about Metaphor is that it essentially has a job system serving as an analog for personas. The Archetypes your characters can embody scratch the same itch as a Final Fantasy V or a Bravely Default, but still feel thematically similar to SMT demons, including the ability to inherit skills between the various Archetypes. Most of the spell and ability names are pulled from SMT proper, so you'll see your Tarukajas and Rakundas, although not all of the elemental spell names are the same, curiously.
Persona games are always about being a complete package of aesthetic, story, and gameplay, and Metaphor mostly delivers on this front. The characters are a lot of fun to hang out with and to learn about, and the plot, straightforward as it is, makes sense and resonates. You could make the argument that the plot is just a retread of the same adolescent tropes the Persona series has always covered, which isn't exactly untrue—but Metaphor does deserve a few points for erring on the more political side this time around, even if its take on those subjects isn't the most advanced. To be honest, though, the crunchy gameplay is what got me the most this time around. Persona has always been fun just for exploiting weaknesses and lining up buffs and debuffs, but Metaphor takes an extra step in allowing you more control over building all of your characters and fully customizing their loadout by leveling up different classes and inheriting a variety of skills. It has everything I like about these games, except for one noticeable area where it falls short. I'm shocked to say that the soundtrack mostly doesn't do it for me. It's a perfectly competent fantasy soundtrack, but most of it simply doesn't stand out, which is honestly bizarre for someone of Shoji Meguro's pedigree. There are a couple standout tracks (like the battle theme), but for the most part it's pretty forgettable. I couldn't help but be reminded of SMT: Strange Journey's soundtrack, which had a similar fantasy gothic aesthetic and didn't work for me for similar reasons. Credit to Metaphor, though, the game is good enough that it doesn't need the music to carry it.
#53: The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve (Nintendo Switch; December 19th)
I played through the first Great Ace Attorney game a full three years ago, with the intention of taking a quick break and then returning maybe in a couple of months. Obviously, I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off... until suddenly, three years had passed! I don't spend a ton of time on the Switch these days. It has mostly been supplanted by the Steam Deck for handheld games these days. As such, this is the first game this entire year I've played on Switch. I may not play any more until the Switch 2 at this rate. If I play Ace Attorney Investigations, that'll be on PC/Steam Deck since these games are no longer Nintendo-exclusive. So, since I spend much less time on the Switch in general, it's been easier to keep Great Ace Attorney 2 in the back of my mind while I try other stuff. After having cleared damn near everything else in my backlog, I finally returned to it this year. Unsurprisingly, I'd forgotten a lot of the events of the first game, but the sequel does a pretty decent job recapping so that you can refamiliarize yourself with the game's characters, including the wacky Herlock Sholmes. I particularly enjoyed the very first case, where you assume the role of Susato dressing up as a man to bypass historical Japan's laws regarding women in the courtroom. From there, the game jumps around a little chronologically to build suspense regarding Ryuunosuke's suspension from practicing law in Great Britain. I do you feel you spend a bit too much time without Susato compared to the first game—and Iris doesn't serve as a great replacement. I also feel the game lags a little in the middle more generally, but it does really bring it home for the final case. It wraps up not only the events of the second game, but the sequence of events set in motion from the very beginning of the first as well. I know a lot of folks actually like these games more than the original Ace Attorney games, but I don't consider myself in that camp. I like them just fine, mind you. They're very polished, but Ryuunosuke never stood out much to me as a character. Susato is cool, and Herlock Sholmes is a funny parody—but the 19th century Great Britain setting isn't necessarily my favorite. Also, the big "twist" of this second game is honestly quite half-baked. I didn't particularly care for it, even if the case it led to was enjoyable in a vacuum.
I've noticed a trend here in that I'm playing through at least two entries in several long-running series, but at different parts of the year. This is true for Yakuza, for Ys, Etrian Odyssey, and finally for Super Robot Wars as well. I've started playing several of these games in Japanese over the past couple of years as I've worked on seriously learning the language. I still have a long way to go, but immersing myself in games like these can't hurt. Also, this game rules? I somehow completely missed that this is far from a traditional Super Robot Wars game. You can talk about the usual series stuff and that it's cool that this one incorporates Eureka Seven, the rare anime I've actually watched all the way through (many years ago). What really interests me about it (other than the usual) is that it has a squad system. Most of these games have you dispatch up to around 14 units at a time. In Z, you dispatch as many as 20 squads in the later missions. Each of these squads are composed of three separate mechs, so the level of micromanagement is ratcheted up to extreme levels. There's a lot of strategic depth in the squad system in that it introduces a series of choices for how you engage enemies. Want to focus fire a single target? You can go in Center Formation, where your leader will have enhanced accuracy and your squad mates follow up with their own attacks. Alternatively, if you want to whittle down an enemy squad, you can try Wide Formation so that all there of your units attack all three of theirs individually. Finally, there's Tri Formation, allows you to use Tri-Attacks, special combination skills that hit the entire enemy team but are controlled entirely by the leader. They also ignore barriers, which other attacks that hit all members of a squad don't do by default. Each of these formations have little side benefits that don't immediately become obvious until you take the time to experiment with them. You also want to keep into account squad leader bonuses, the bonuses provided by being adjacent to your battleships, and then the normal terrain and morale stuff that you consider in any other game in this series. All of these elements would be enough to make the game really engrossing, but I'm also pretty impressed with the roster, which features some new (to me) options like Overman King Gainer, Genesis of Aquarion, Super Heavy God Gravion, Space Warrior Baldios, and Eureka Seven. And then you have some returning favorites like Big O, After War Gundam X, and Gundam Seed Destiny. Unlike many games in the series, I really felt spoiled for choice—and because you're given so much flexibility on who you can deploy, you really don't have to bench much of anyone, especially much later on in the game. This may well be my favorite of the non-OG titles at this point!
Well, there you go. The final number is a bit arbitrary, but it always has been. I just like seeing the numbers, which makes it odd that I didn't even really include them last year. If you made it all the way to the bottom of this 15000+ word document, I applaud you—and maybe go outside. I should take my own advice.
