List of Games Beaten in 2021 (Part Two)
Because I ran out of room on this one.
Darn you, 100 item limit for ordered lists. Darn you to heck.
Refer back to that one for extra details and the other hundred games I completed in 2021.
List items
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25/11. The two-hundred-and-forty-seventh Indie Game of the Week. Clever chronological puzzle game with a sweet story about two buddies and their misadventures. Far too short, but ain't that always the case with childhoods? (4 Stars.)
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02/12. The fifth in the VN-ese Waltz series and the fortieth 2017 game of the year. Part of the same series as Steins;Gate, Chaos;Child is a way darker story about serial murders and psychics in a post-disaster version of Shibuya. Doesn't hit the same highs as Steins;Gate and even its better endings were downers, but it's still every bit as engrossing and some of those alternative routes get real wild. (4 Stars.)
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03/12. The two-hundred-and-forty-eighth Indie Game of the Week. One of the earliest Indie RPG Maker games to start subverting the usual hero's journey template of the genre, forcing the player to consider what they're doing to this bizarre world of moody NPCs and hostile phantoms by "purifying" it. Great battle music and a surreal setting and narrative worth exploring, though with the caveats that the combat is just whatever and there's far too many random encounters. (3 Stars.)
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10/12. The two-hundred-and-forty-ninth Indie Game of the Week. A stage-based explormer that has you bouncing back and forth as you acquire new traversal upgrades. While not much to look at - MS Paint can always do in a pinch - the combat's pretty decent and it offers a fair challenge, especially with the boss fights. Music's oddly good too. (4 Stars.)
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20/12. The forty-first 2017 game of the year. The Ilvard Insurrection was a game that started strong and then continued to up the ante, providing not only an entertaining dungeon crawler full of funny and smart ideas as well as a bizarre but rewarding experience system but also an equally funny and smart localization that, when it wasn't joking around with its gaggle of eccentric villains and NPCs, displayed an uncommon emotional maturity little seen in JRPGs which on the whole tend to play things more broadly and black & white. The action-RPG combat is right up there with the likes of Ys and Terranigma before it: a selection of jump attacks and combos that make smashing through dungeons at a rapid clip that much more invigorating. Needless to say, Falcom decided to supply the game with an exceptional soundtrack, even including a sampler of other great Falcom OSTs with its in-game music player. (5 Stars.)
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28/12. The sixth in the VN-ese Waltz series. Another grim horror visual novel, this one has a bit more mechanical complexity and is technically more of a standard adventure game than a VN. Marked for death by a vengeful spirit, the amnesiac protagonist and a group of other similarly-doomed NPCs must explore locations for hints on how to destroy or placate the spirits that cursed them, while avoiding early demises by answering rapid-fire multiple choice prompts. Drags a little in parts, but nails the atmosphere and sound design a game like this needs to terrify its audience. (4 Stars.)
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31/12. The forty-second 2017 game of the year. Just a real solid picross game for those who have a hankering for such things, sold for peanuts on Steam and Itch despite offering more than 300 puzzles across its three modes. What really enhances the experience is the game's quirky sense of humor, leading to inventive puzzle ideas and silly joke names for puzzles to avoid copyright infringement. (5 Stars.)
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31/12. The forty-third 2017 game of the year. Enough has been written about this "what if Fleischer Studios produced a Genesis-era Treasure game?" and its perfectly replicated 1920s animation style, but what might get lost in the shuffle is how well-considered each of its multi-stage boss fights can be. You can purchase a different assortment of passive buffs and firing styles, and each makes their value apparent for specific encounters: an example would be the boomerang backwards shots, handy for the fights when you're being chased, or the seeker shots for foes that jump around the screen a lot. I was dreading trying to grapple with Cuphead's infamous difficulty, but besides for a few shoot 'em up levels I didn't run into too much trouble. I think the game's more fair than it lets on, otherwise it probably wouldn't be as popular as it is. (4 Stars.)
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