Another year, another short list of games I managed to complete. Not hopeful I'll break any records this year. Between a new Final Fantasy XIV expansion in the fall and post-COVID travel in the last few months of the year (hopefully), I might not have a lot of time for other games the latter half of 2021.
Finished Feb 2021. Wanted to give the DMC franchise a chance and I plan on working my way up to DMC5. The first Devil May Cry has a lot less story than I anticipated. Combat felt good but the mission structure and backtracking made parts feel like a chore. I heard DMC2 is the worst so I'm going to hold off for a few months.
Finished March 2021. I like the idea of Binding of Isaac, the Edmund McMillen rogue-like, but I didn't like the aesthetics. UnderMine has similar gameplay with more tasteful aesthetics. It borrows the Rogue Legacy mechanic of being able to permanently upgrade skills and stats with a portion of the gold collected on each run, so that would classify this as a rogue-lite, technically. It takes several runs before you unlock enough abilities, store items, and minions to create some of the screen-filling loadouts Binding of Isaac is known for. Altogether it is enjoyable and I'm hoping there is DLC to add more to the game.
Finished April 2021. Kyle Seeley's third Emily is Away visual novel is set in 2008-2009 when the high school protagonist finally gives up AOL Instant Messenger for Facebook. Unlike most visual novels, this game place mostly on a mockup of the early Facebook and Youtube websites. The player navigate relationships over the throwback Facebook interface: status messages, photo captions, and integrated messenger.
Back in 2015 I felt a strong connection to the first Emily is Away because the characters were the same age I was when the game was set and I was a heavy AOL Instant Messenger user at the time. I was worried this game would not connect because I was already in my mid 20s when this game was set, but that was not the case.
At times playing Emily is Away was painful because I remember having very similar dramatic conversations and making the same mistakes. With hindsight of near middle-age I tried navigating the protagonist to better outcomes but fell into many of the same traps of jealousy and self-centeredness. Supposedly there are multiple endings, so I see myself playing this again in the future.
Finished July 2021. I played through NieR on the PS3 a few years ago before the release of Automata. At the time I enjoyed it but the concept of replaying the same half of the game several times to get a new ending was slightly off putting. With the ver.1.22474487139... remaster, that effort is definitely worthwhile. Ending E, though short, was an amazing way to end NieR and hopefully a new branch point for an alternative timeline to the one that Automata portrayed.
Finished July 2021. I feel guilty for saying: "It was okay." Disco Elysium is highly praised by both the media and by friends, but I lost enthusiasm as I played. I thought the world was interestingly written but it didn't really say anything about politics other than setting up bleak outcomes where there are no good solutions. Mechanically you couldn't really build your character the way you want, instead you had to bank stat points to clear checks at story bottlenecks. Instead of opening alternative paths the game expects you to go do side quests to level up. I tried to build a character as dumb as possible and didn't get very far. Besides some surreal moments and funny dialog, the resolution left me unsatisfied.
Finished Sep 2021. I have been slowly making my way through the Yakuza games dating back to the first on the PS2. Each one I felt was much better than the last. Half way through Yakuza 5 I thought that streak was going to end. Like Yakuza 4, you play as multiple characters so chapters can be hit or miss depending on that character's story. The middle chapters of the game sagged starting with Saejima continuing with the Haruka chapter. However the strength of the newcomer Shinada character and the finale made a very strong impression and saved my opinion of the game.
Finished Sep 2021. Blaster Master for the NES was one of the first video games I played. The switch from zoomed out side-scrolling to close-up overhead shooting blew my grade school mind. It was also punishingly hard, I don't think I made it very far rescuing my pet frog. Blaster Master Zero had a gentle onboarding but some of the later areas were frustrating. The sneaking (in a tank) level was a pain and many of the later maps were designed to frustrate. I received the "Normal" ending (i.e. the bad ending) because I didn't have the patience to backtrack through every single map to unlock every single item and fill in the entire map for each area.
Finished Oct 2021. Certainly a game that looks better in screenshots and a plot that sounds better on paper. Forgotton Anne is a 7-10 hour puzzle adventure about a human girl in a land of animated forgotten objects. The animation looks good until you attempt to move in the world and you see the limits imposed by a small budget. Animation isn't very fluid and there are moments when the character just freezes up and skates across the environment (usually when moving towards or away from the camera). I felt like I was fighting the controls the entire length of the game. The story was ok, but the character growth felt rushed due to the shorter length of the game. The gameplay is a series of lever puzzles that weren't too challenging. Despite my complaints the game is "ok."
Finished Nov 2021. Finally got around to beating Strange Journey after 90 hours over ten or eleven months. By far the best SMT story I've played in a fairly frustrating game. Not only was the combat difficult (I played on hard) but the dungeons were huge and filled with warps and blocked paths. Overall I do think it was a lot of fun even though I relied on walkthrough and maps after walking around in circles -- padding out the playtime hour count. Going in blind I somehow avoided most of the new story content introduced in the 3DS remake. I tend to really dislike the token 'new girl' character Atlus puts in their re-releases/remakes anyway so I don't mind. What Alex's story is will be left a mystery or explored in a future replay.
Finished Nov 2021. In 2013 I watched the Danganronpa anime series which got me interested in playing the visual novel by the same name. I was quite disappointed to learn the anime was a retelling of the game and not a new story. So for several years the Danganronpa sat in my modest Vita game collection untouched. At the time I thought one day I'll forget the details of the story and be able to play the game again. Eight years later I gave it another go with only vague recollections of the characters and no memory of the ending to the anime. The writing is pretty funny and moves at a brisk enough pace, the characters are all likeable, and the artist drew some good ahegao faces. It's unfair comparing Danganronpa to better visual novels like Umineko and Stein's Gate, but I don't think the mystery in Danganronpa is that deep. I wish the detective and trial parts of the game were more interesting puzzles instead of frustrating mini-games. I'll move on to the sequels at some future date.
Finished December 2021. Played the translated SFC collection of Dragon Quest 1 and 2 through emulation. Dragon Warrior came out when I was too young to understand RPGs but I have distinct memories of being intrigued watching my friend's dad play it with the provided guide on his lap. Despite loving RPGs, I haven't played through any Dragon Quest game so I decided to start from the beginning. These early games have a lot of charm but also also ask a lot of the player. Playing with a walkthrough and using the speed up feature of the emulator helped mitigate a lot of the clumsiness of such older games.
Finished December 2021. The Endwalker expansion is the final chapter in the story arc that has been unfolding since A Realm Reborn launched in 2013. The Endwalker story was an emotional and satisfying conclusion to the story with many great new characters and locations. A lot of the refinement to the gameplay has been mostly good. The jobs that I play (Scholar and Warrior) have had some rough edges rounded off. Looking forward to the new story arc that begins with 6.1.
