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beard_of_zeus

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2021 4665 38 34
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GOTY 2021

A big theme this time seems to be games that were not on my radar but ended up being very memorable and I sunk a lot of time into them. There's really only a couple games on here that were known quantities that I was looking forward to.

The new Shin Megami Tensei game is not on here because I only played it for around 15 hours so far. I have been waiting for it for years and loved what I played though! It came out late in the year, and a couple other late contenders (see Undernauts and Dungeon Encounters below) ended up monopolizing a bunch of my time.

It is definitely at the top of my list to get back to in 2022 though!

List items

  • This game somehow manages to balance being hopeless and hopeful, mixing the horrors of war with a cute, ragtag band of animal children. And did I mention the children are riding around in an unstoppable, enormous tank that you can choose to sacrifice them to in order to use their life force for an ultimate attack? (Obviously, I would not do that, I am not a monster, I grew to love all the characters).

    This narrative is paired with a really fun gameplay loop and battle system that requires a decent amount of strategy. You have to also engage with an entire metagame of improving your tank's facilities, progressing the relationships between characters, growing and cooking food, etc., all with a limited number of action points to spend on doing so.

    There is also a very good battle that does some great storytelling via gameplay which really stuck with me (although you only see it on the bad ending route...yes, I did play through this game twice. Also yes, I did lie earlier, I may have stuffed some children in the soul cannon..). This medium doesn't do enough of that, so it really strikes me when it happens.

    I recently read that cyberconnect2 hasn't recouped their dev costs on this game, which is depressing to me. I suppose that is one of the risks of switching to self-publishing. I hope more people play this game!!!

  • I can't believe this actually turned out so well after such a protracted development. It is supremely creative and inventive in a lot of ways; the level designs and theming are second to none. And I was very impressed with how deftly it handled the topics of trauma and mental anguish, honestly.

  • This game is why Metroid Dread did not make the cut, I think it is a much better example of the "Metroidvania" genre than the actual Metroid game that came out this year. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with Dread, but it felt more like a fun action platformer to me because of how much it keeps you on the critical path, and didn't give the player a lot of opportunity to explore.

    Ender Lilies is beautiful and haunting, with a big world to explore (and you actually get to explore!), fun combat, a lot of cool upgrades (both required and optional), etc. It has a lot of nice quality of life things like tons of fast travel points, and a VERY detailed map. It is not the traditional "graph paper" map, instead much more expanded out. You can see the actual size of rooms, with very clear connections between all the doorways. It also does the modern Resident Evil thing of color-coding rooms to tell you when you have completely cleaned out of room of all items.

  • I love DRPGs, and Experience (the developer of this) has made quite a few (Demon Gaze, Stranger of Sword City, Operation Abyss/Babel). I have mostly enjoyed them all, but this is definitely their best game for my money.

    Undernauts eschews the boilerplate anime storyline/visuals of a lot of Experience's past work for a beautiful look that reminds me more of their horror game Death Mark. And the narrative of Undernauts is two types of horror: the horror of a mine full of monsters trying to kill you coupled with the horror of exploiting workers and labor for capitalism's sake.

    Mechnically, it is a solid game, with a couple twists on the genre that I really liked. One, you are actually modifying the dungeons by doing things like building doors, bridges, and ladders as part of your mining job, and the levels are smartly designed around this. Two, in battle, you have buffs that you can use and recharge that do things like guarantee your party goes first or hypercharge all your skills. Deciding when to use these is a big part of the strategy for some of the harder battles.

    And overall, this game removes a lot of the cruft of the genre to the point where I think I would recommend this to people wanting to try out the genre.

  • I'm glad Square Enix finally let Hiroyuki Ito direct a new game, you can DEFINITELY tell this is a game by him. It is barebones, stripped down to just well-designed game mechanics, and there is a lot more depth to this game than it might initially seem. You gain a lot of skills over the course of the game (assuming you are actually exploring the dungeon floors) that change how you explore and battle.

    This game will definitely not appeal to everyone, but everything about it clicked for me. This doesn't surprise me, an interesting battle system is like 85% of my enjoyment of a JRPG. It's interesting comparing this game against the 100 hours I spent on Bravely Default 2 this year (which falls in the pile of really fun battle/job mechanics, but boilerplate story). I played Dungeon Encounters for less than half that amount of time, and got the same kind/amount of (or even more!) enjoyment out of it. Maybe there is something to be said for just cutting out the cruft of a game - develop a good story, or just don't have one at all.

  • Like SMT, this is one of those series that I adore (luckily this game came out in February, so I finished it no problem, unlike SMTV), so you know this was gonna be on my list. I really liked the story in this game, it goes to some cool places by the end, and there is a lot of references/callouts for long time fans of the series in this game that also serve the plot in some ways.

    The movement/exploration mechanics they added in this game are great, being able to run up walls and basically grappling hook around is really fun.

  • This is a humorous, delightful, slightly melancholy action adventure with fun combat and exploration. Just a really well made game that I had a lot of fun playing. The writing was funnier and more charming than I expected, especially for the boss characters that you meet.

  • This was a game I went into without knowing a lot about, the American cover art looks like a new Killzone game, and I did not realize it was secret anime. I ended up really enjoying it from top to bottom - super fun combat, a lot of likeable characters that are fleshed out pretty well with far more dialogue scenes that I had expected, all encased in a wild plot that definitely goes places.

  • This game probably brought me the most unabashed joy this year. It constantly up-ended my expectations over and over. It has so much style, it's ridiculous. You know whether you are in for this game or not, it is definitely for people who already like this series.

  • This was my biggest surprise of the year. I don't really care that much about Marvel stuff, and I bought this on a bit of whim during Black Friday because there was a lot of positive buzz. But I really enjoyed it! Some truly great writing and characterization, and a story with a far more emotional core to it than I was expecting.
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