Mezmero

I've played a few hours of Vampyr. Many aspects of this game could be described as extremely mediocre but I find the game structure itself to be positively fascinating. There's an odd satisfaction to sort of fattening up a potential meal through gathering information about their darkest secrets and weighing the value of their blood versus their moral ambiguity. There's a lot of potential to this vampire medical procedural concept that I'd love to see another game take a crack at to perfect the formula. It's a nice reminder that games can be flawed yet interesting enough to feel worth playing.

I put down Apex Legends for a bit to play some Titanfall 2 multiplayer. Yup, still an all time favorite multiplayer game of mine. Nothing quite like coming down from the adrenaline rush of getting on roll in a match and ending up as a top scorer. For as quickly as Apex seems to move, this game moves like buttered lightning by comparison.

The existence of Tales From the Borderlands makes me incapable of giving a shit about another shlooter from Gearbox. It'll be a miracle if they can even match the level of world building and character development that Telltale did with their game.

Dororo - Ow, my heart. And here I thought Hyakkimaru was the one with the cruel origin story.

Run With the Wind - ARRGH MY HEART! Might need to promote Shindo to best boy if he wasn't already.

I sort of want Ciri from Witcher 3 but I'm also not sure that I'd want to see her get eviscerated via fatality.

Abstinent Evil. If there were more horses in these games I'd suggest Equestrian Evil.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind - In regards to the past several Stand battles, I distinctly remember back when I read these chapters thinking "Man, if this could get animated someday it would be freaking awesome. Too bad that'll never happen...." I have not been disappointed.

Run With the Wind - OUJI!!!!! I love you and your love of sports manga. Between this and Hinomaruzumou this has been one of best seasons of sports anime in a while for me. So many good boys.

Dororo is still good. Mob is still great. Saintia Shou is kind of baffling.

I've been playing an embarrassing amount of Apex Legends lately and even won a couple games. I have to admit I've not been the biggest fan of the "sneaky bastard sim" genre that has been trending more and more in gamingXstreaming culture. Leave it to the dev that made one of my favorite online shooters ever with Titanfall 2 to make one of these games that I actually like.

I played through Dark Souls 2 again but did so in the Scholar of the First Sin version for the first time. Though I generally like the DeDarkBlourne franchise I've never played the DLC of any of them so I was pleasantly surprised by how cool some of the extra bosses and added narrative devices ended up being. I might say this is my favorite game in the series which I know is not a popular opinion.

I wasn't sure if I was ready for season 2 of Mob Psycho 100% but right from the jump I was ???% back into this show. It continues to excel by combining my love for shounen action and my contempt for career psychics as a profession into a fun coming of age tale with some of ONE's signature satirical humor peppered throughout. I'm still of the mind that this show is hands down better than One Punch Man despite maybe not having the same level of broad appeal.

I've been liking this new adaptation for Dororo quite a bit. It's funny the only reason I knew anything about this series before hand was because of that one PS2 game based on the same property and the only indication I had that it was possibly a Tezuka joint was the design of Dororo himself, which seems like the only character design even remotely intact from the source material. My favorite part has to be the revamped portrayal of Hyakkimaru's predicament making his mere presence very unsettling no matter who he interacts with.

I've been catching up on Run With the Wind and rather enjoy it. I appreciate it having more of a focus on highlighting the ensemble cast and not primarily centering on a singular main character. So far it's been very low key in its depiction of the sport in question, more using it as a source of personal growth in these young adults. Even in the early goings I found myself cheering on these dudes despite there not being any deadly serious competition going on just yet. Also digging the chill vibe of the soundtrack.

@animasta: Yeah even as someone who has loved JoJo for many years I sometimes find it distressing how few people take Araki to task for his bad female characters. I haven't been current on the manga for maybe a year now but even in the current arc there have been portrayals of females that I'd describe as problematic. Even long before that you can look at Lisa Lisa who is definitively a badass but then you have the asterisk of "Well she's a woman so of course she couldn't stand a chance against the main villain, don't be crazy." Unfortunately that's not the last time it happens in the series. As mentioned there are more women to come in Part 3 but I'd describe all of them sharing the defining characteristic of "conniving bitches." The only defense I can offer up is that ALL of the characters are ludicrous: man, woman, child, adult, animal, etc. they're all simply absurd. I'd like to think Araki isn't a huge sexist but rather all about making his characters as heavy metal as possible.

Nice job on the write-up this year. Another reminder of how out of touch I am with modern anime since I've watched less than half of this list. If I had watched Hi-Score Girl before voting ended that might have very well been my number one as I would easily bump a spot on my list for it. Anywho here's how I ended up weighting my votes:

I realize Castlevania was going to win non-anime almost by default (heck I voted for it) but yo that's a decent cartoon that's also poorly directed. Aggretsuko surprised me more than anything last year with a possible runner-up being Hinomaruzumou, though again I hadn't watched Hi-Score Girl in time. Don't think I inputted anything for Disappointing but looking back I should've put in a vote for Seven Deadly Sins. While not technically an anime I'd give a shout out to Critical Role's new OP that premiered near the end of last year, but yeah I defaulted to Fighting Gold. I might have had the Slime anime in my top five if it wasn't another goddamn Isekai show.

Heck man you're a way bigger fan of this franchise than I am at this point, and I've played and finished most of these games when they were new. Then again I never finished any passed FFX so you're already ahead of the curb on this stuff. I thought when Zodiac Age released I might give this game another shot but I've seen my brother play some late game stuff in the vanilla version and boy does it not look appealing or rewarding the way you kind of just run your party into mobs and let the gambits do the rest. I'm sure down the line there's some psychotic satisfaction to getting them programmed just right but in the opening hours I could not find anything to like about this game's design, art direction, or characters so I quit prematurely. Same thing happened with XIII where I think I just reached an age where I just don't have time to waste on long games that are mostly bad save for a handful of kinda neat stuff in between.