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galacticdonut

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Best of 2014

Here we go!

So according to my work in progress list apparently I played 27 games this year! That's kinda mad, as it definitely feels like I had less time, fewer games came out and everything was all doom-and-gloom for a lot of the year.
Shows what I remember!

Here's a list!

Honourable mentions:

Bravely Default - A lot of people might put this on their lists in the US, but it came out in 2013 for EU (and made my list last year!)

Dragon Age: Inquistion - I think if I'd been able to play more of this it would be somewhere high up, given all the praise it's been getting. As it is, I'm only 3 hours in.

PES 2015 - It's a good game this year!

Most Honorable Mention:

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I really wanted this on there, but three Tales games would probably be too much, especially as it's only an HD remaster. That aside, since when did I have to worry about including too many Tales games on one of these lists? 3 releases in one year is such a wild difference compared to 2009, when there was even a 10 month delay between an EU and US release...

Anyway, props to my first and most nostalgia-filled Tales game.

For everything else that I've played this year, see here: Games of 2014

List items

  • As I mention below, I had difficulty deciding whether to put at number 1 or 2 - but in a reverse of last year, Tales beats out the investigation game!

    Why Xillia 2? Broken down into it's separate pieces, there's some slightly awkward parts to it - the lack of MC voice acting, the debt system, while not really a roadblock, does pad out the game in a more obtrusive way than normal and reusing a lot of the assets from Xillia 1 were a shame, if not unexpected.

    But!

    The game does a fantastic job of fleshing out the Xillia 1 cast, brings in a genuinely reasonable child character and woah does that story get DARK!

    Funny how my two favourite games this year have some really depressing moments and like with Danganronpa below, Xillia 2 has it's moments of utter despair. Tales games have their fair share of anime drama, but this is easily up there with most tearjerker moments in this series for me. One part in particular starts just after a pretty awful character death and soundtrack is a lilting acoustic guitar that just hits you!

    I do love a sad story.

  • I had a real struggle deciding whether to put this on top over Xillia 2, which just goes to show how much I enjoyed Danganronpa. Although binging the entire game over the course of a week probably shows that as well.

    It's very '9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors' meets 'Phoenix Wright', mixing some interesting characters with a (DARK!) story and some amazing music on top (It is Masafumi Takada after all - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76wWVp-JIO8).

    Whereas 999 was a slow story, culminating with a huge WTF twist, Danganronpa instead builds it's story over the course of the game, slowly adding on extra mysteries/character development and plot points as the game goes on. There is that twist at the end, but the overall tone, characters and story make it a really cool experience all the way through.

    Some of the gameplay elements get a little picky (knowing exactly what the contradictory statement is, but having to aim & time your button press can get frustrating if you keep messing up) but I never found them to overshadow everything else.

    Also, after the game killed off my initial two favourite characters I spent the last half of it being absolutely terrified it would kill off the last likeable character there!

    Looking forward to playing the second one.

  • If games ranked on my list based on how much they made me laugh, this would beat everything else hands down. It's that curled-over, hands over the face, "oh god I'm going to die" laughter that you only get playing with friends and that alone puts this on my list.

    It's been such a staple of recent parties, and with such a low-hassle way of getting lots of people involved, it's been worth every penny.

  • Tales games have a habit of turning up high on my lists, but there honestly hasn't been a poor one (localised!) for me since Symphonia 2, so it's no surprise Hearts R ended up here.

    It's an interesting experiment for Namco Bandai, as it's the first localised game in the series not to get a dub - instead, having subtitles for most of the dialogue. Odd translations aside, the game holds up well. It still did a good job of getting me attached to the characters, kept the combat interesting with the new Chase systems (being able to beat seven bells out of a foe and keep them staggered for while giving one-button teleporting to the face if they managed to get away) and sucked another 40 hours of my life away.

    Yay Tales!

  • I really liked Transistor. Darren Korb's soundtrack is once again amazing, and a big part of the reason I enjoyed Bastion so much way back when. The strategy-like combat is really intresting and the variety of combinations you can use with all of the different abilities kept everything fresh throughout the game. Combine all that with a gorgeous art style, interesting story concept (which unfortunately was a little buried in the abilities) and I had a great experience.

  • Unlike every game above this in my list, I wasn't planning on getting this game at release. This was one of those purchases I made on sheer word of mouth/buzz/hype or whatever you want to call it, but didn't regret my time with it at all.

    Plenty of other people will talk about how good this game is - but the combat and the nemesis system filled in that Assassin's Creed void I've had since finishing AC3. Shame the story was pretty rubbish.

  • As someone that first came into the Souls series with Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2 was never going to quite capture the wonder of the first one but it still provides the challenge, the aesthetic and the satisfaction for me to really enjoy playing it earlier this year.

  • I'm used to waiting a few years between each AA game, so having this come pretty quickly after AA5 was both a positive and negative. It doesn't do a great job of blending Layton and AA into a cohesive game, but as a fan of both separate entities I had a lot of fun flicking between them as the story went on. And as a fan of both games' music styles, having the AA tracks done in Layton-style was worth it alone.

  • I started playing this in beta last year, but it only got a proper release in 2014. Working in the TCG industry it's been interesting watching a whole number of non-traditional digital variants pop up alongside the stalwarts of Magic, Pokémon and the deck-building games like Ascension. Hearthstone does an excellent job of providing the ideal difficulty curve of a TCG to get new players involved, a fairly well-balanced set of cards and does it with the Blizzard sheen and animation quality that you've come to expect.

  • This was in the Best Music discussion on the GotY podcasts, but just LISTEN to it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnAKPTa8K2E.

    Great art style, great music, addictive gameplay and lots of hours lost spinning in the circles blowing everything up.
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