RWBladewing

Nobody's mentioned Legendia? Shirley is an excellent character with very logical and admirable motivations

.....hahaha, but no, really, my vote would be for Abyss, mainly for Jade and Tear but also because of general party chemistry. It just felt slightly less "generic trope-y" than the rest in its interactions between characters (though "slightly" is still the key word).

@dan_citi: This is kind of a crappy tip and you may already be aware of it, but it worked for me: if he's about to do his AOE and it looks like you may not be able to get out in time, stand completely still and you'll take significantly less damage. It'll still likely take off the majority of your life but you won't be in oneshot range in his final phase assuming you've leveled your hp sufficiently.

@golguin: I was happy the Abhorrent Beast was gone too....until he spawned again as the first random boss in the very next dungeon run. Quite a bit easier the second time around after you already know what to do though; managed to 1-shot him this time. He seems to like me as I had to face him a third time later on too.

I held off on beating the game for a while because I wanted to try to complete the chalice dungeons first, but after finally beating the Loran Darkbeast and moving on to yet another area that was identical to the last I just couldn't take it anymore and decided to fight the final boss. Was pretty relieved to find out your progress in these carries over and doesn't scale to NG+ though, now I can go back when I want and don't have to feel like all that time up to that point was wasted like I was worried it might be (I refused to look at a guide for anything until beating the game at least once so I didn't know this was the case until I'd already done it).

It's probably more like, she's meant to be an original character within the DOA-verse but is just an extremely direct reference/tribue.

Wow, uh, between the name, sidetail hairstyle, default uniform color, and mannerisms, this pretty much IS the character Honoka Kousaka from Love Live! School Idol Project. That can't have been unintentional.

I realize this whole GOTY stuff is all in good fun but it's really easy to see it exactly how you've described at times. Alex's arguments about the quality of Destiny being met with a rebuttal along the lines of "Yeah well you already got Mario Kart and Jazzpunk on the list, so be happy with that" is the prime example that sticks out to me from this year.

I also get the impression that Jeff has a lot more fun trying to mess with the others by getting their favorite games off the list than he does getting his own on it, haha.

Man, hearing some people's stories about the Nemesis and Talon fights makes me jealous. I just completed them and well...my Nemesis was just some random uruk I'd never seen because I managed to go the entire game without dying except to caragors at the start, and I'd previously finished off any other nemeses I'd encountered. And one of my warchiefs instantly enraged upon seeing my caragor mount at the start of the Talon battle and obliterated 4/5 of them by himself. The entire ending sequence ended up being super anticlimactic for me.

I'm obviously not the only one since people have contributed to these wikis here but:

Super Solvers Midnight Rescue (and just about every other game in this series).

Super Munchers

...I feel really old now.

As always, Master of Orion 3. I've never seen another sequel that so thoroughly betrayed everything that made the previous game great.

Dishonorable mention to ME3. That game was at least playable unlike the above.

I enjoy visual novels a great deal but I was super wary about this as soon as I saw it; even just looking at the cover artwork gave a strong impression that it was a throwaway game with cardboard trope characters and generic non-eroge fanservice designed to rope in desperate otaku for a quick buck. I'm actually sad that it sounds like I was right.

@wolfgame Kara no Shoujo is probably my favorite VN but I'd also add the disclaimer that anyone playing it should be prepared for some pretty extreme violence and dark themes. It's definitely not for everyone.