This is a list of all the games, new and old, I completed in 2019. I don't have a goal exactly for this year but I feel like I want to try playing shorter experiences in 2019 rather than all the huge RPGs I focused on last year.
Here are my lists for past years:
(2/17) - This was a title I had been wanting to play in English for a very long time and thanks to the English translation patch released last year I was finally able to do that. My experience playing Metal Slader Glory reminded me a lot of my time playing Idol Hakkenden last year. The title exudes a certain charm that kept me coming back for more. The game’s setting and storytelling style also reminds me a lot of old 80s anime OVAs, especially Megazone 23. The story itself might be silly and amateurish in a way but the obvious enthusiasm put into the title by its creators, and its strong production values, really carry the experience. I hope more retro Japanese adventure games like this are translated into English.
(3/6) - Resident Evil 2 is a fantastic game that continues the horror focused direction the franchise began with RE7 and blends it with the presentation of RE4 and story/setting of RE2. The game kind of feels like Capcom taking the best elements from Resident Evil's entire history as a franchise and putting them all into one title. I really enjoyed it.
(3/8) - I feel like I never really got "good" at playing Bayonetta and obtained the lowest ranking on almost every chapter. But the crazy story and characters kept me going and even when I was failing it was still a fun time.
(3/17) – I found Panzer Dragoon to be a rather straightforward experience whose presentation didn’t age well in some areas. The 3D models were especially hard on the eyes, often being so pixelated that it was difficult for me to understand what I was looking at half the time. But at the game's core is a genuinely fun arcade-style shooter that I had a good time with. And while Panzer Dragoon’s presentation was rough on a technical level, the art design was very cool. The game projects this mysterious atmosphere, with its made-up language and Moebius inspired art style, that I found very appealing. So overall, I still found the game well worth playing despite the problems I had with it.
(3/19) - A big improvement over the original game, I feel like Zwei fixes pretty much all my problems with Panzer Dragoon 1. The final boss is also very cool and honestly gave me chills when I was fighting it.
(5/2) - Thanks to the newly released fan translation of Dai Gyakuten Saiban I was finally able to play this entry in the series. I had been dying to experience this game for years since it had such a cool looking setting and was being directed by the original creator of Ace Attorney, Shu Takumi. However, I was oddly disappointed by the game. I’m not trying to say the game is horrible and it isn’t like the fan translation ruined the script or something, in fact the translation is very high quality. My problem with the game is that while all the pieces are amazing individually the game doesn’t come together in any meaningful way. What I mean is that while I think the setting is great, the presentation is fantastic, the new gameplay mechanics are fun and I even like the new cast a lot, the story just feels like it spins its wheels without taking advantage of the game’s full potential. In most Ace Attorney games, the first case is basically a short courtroom tutorial then the second episode is an abridged version of a typical case featuring both investigative gameplay and courtroom battles and the final two cases are full blown episodes. Not every Ace Attorney game needs to follow this structure perfectly, in fact Spirit of Justice shook things up a bit in a refreshing way, but Dai Gyakuten Saiban’s story feels like it is dragging its feet with the way it is structured. Instead of a single tutorial episode, the first three chapters are basically tutorials. The first is a tutorial for a basic courtroom battle, the second is a tutorial for investigations and the third is a tutorial for London courtroom battles. It isn’t until the fourth episode that the player gets to do a case with investigations and courtroom battles, but it is really only the fifth and final episode that truly feels like a fully fleshed out case. The game just spends way too much time introducing its mechanics and way too much time setting up its story (it isn’t even until the final episode that the main character has decided that he wants to be an attorney). It also doesn’t help that all these tutorial episodes are very long, often being just as long as a full episode, making it so you have to spend hours doing one type of gameplay instead of interacting with all of the game’s systems. The entire game just feels like it is all setup and basically no pay off. I realize that this game is the first part of a duology and that many overall plot points aren’t going to be addressed until the sequel, but the first game’s ending is just so unsatisfying. The game feels like it is just getting started when the credits start playing. It doesn’t even have a cliffhanger or anything to get you excited about the next game, it just leaves all of its plot threads unresolved and just ends. Maybe once I play the sequel, I will look back on Dai Gyakuten Saiban more positively, which is very likely, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed by a game that does so much so right but then seemingly squanders its potential and never gets into the meat of its story.
(5/24) - Trails in the Sky the 3rd really gave me a whole new perspective on the Sky arc of the Trails series. While I liked the first two games, they often felt like they were doing a lot of setup to tell a simple love story between two characters while not really giving a lot of closure for characters and plot points outside of that love story. Trails in the Sky the 3rd however gives the closure the Sky arc needed. Instead of focusing on one group of characters it puts a spotlight on every important character from the previous two games and gives them a moment to shine and wrap up their stories (for the time being). Every character moment is great and actually makes the events of the previous two games even more impactful now that you know more about the characters’ pasts or what they have being doing since Second Chapter. Plus Kevin is a great lead and the game’s soundtrack, I think, is easily the best of the Sky games. I want to say The 3rd is my favorite game in the Sky arc, but it feels weird to separate it like that from the other games. The game is an awesome epilogue that rounds off the trilogy in a very satisfying way, but it wouldn’t be as special if the other two games hadn’t done the work of building up its setting and characters. So, I’ll just say that it was the game that made me truly love the Sky arc and made me even more invested in the franchise overall.
(7/17) - I’m running out of things to say about Trails games but I quite enjoyed my time with Zero, in spite of experiencing the game with a rough English translation. Just like the rest of the franchise, Zero is the first part of a two-part story arc. But unlike the other games, where the first title in the duology only feels like the first half of a story, Zero instead feels more like the first season of a TV show. Each chapter focuses on Lloyd and company solving a new mystery and busting a new crime, making the game feel a lot more episodic. So instead of the game ending on a big cliffhanger, it concludes with the team defeating that season’s bad guy while leaving the bigger mysteries unresolved for future seasons (aka the next game). I also appreciated how the game mainly focused on the four main leads instead of a larger playable cast and how it kept its story contained to a single city, allowing the city to be filled with life and fun details while also allowing me time to grow attached to the Special Support Section. However, having the game be set in one city for 90 hours sometimes also felt like a detractor. Running around the same locations over and over again to talk to NPCs and complete quests did get tiring after a while. The middle of the game, especially during the festival, also dragged a bit and made Zero feel much longer than it needed to. Overall though, I liked Zero and enjoyed my stay in Crossbell.
(7/22) - Had a good time playing this with my younger brother. It reminded me of playing Contra 3 back in 2007 on the Wii's Virtual Console.
(8/26) - My opinions on Three Houses is a bit more mixed than I was expecting when I first started playing the game. I basically have no complaints with the first half of the game. The gameplay at the school is fun to mess around with in between battles, the cast is a joy, the combat is classic Fire Emblem goodness and the overall story has a lot of mystery that kept me wanting to learn more. But once I hit the time skip, I felt like there was a huge portion of the story I was missing out on. It doesn’t help that I didn’t end up recruiting anyone to my class, making the school feel very empty in the second half, but I also felt like I didn’t understand characters’ motivations for starting the war and the ending I got just felt really abrupt and unsatisfying. I realize that the game has multiple endings and that I could get a better picture of the overall story after multiple playthroughs, but after playing the game for over 60 hours I can’t find the motivation to do that. However, I did love everything else about the game and I will definitely return to it someday.
(10/20) - Really enjoyed the SNES game and this was an entertaining remake.
(11/4) - While I have “experienced” this game before, playing it with my brothers years ago, I never actually finished the original Sakura Wars myself until recently. I was a beta tester on the upcoming fan translation for the original Saturn version of Sakura Wars and I completed the game for the first time in English. While I still maintain that the rest of the Sakura Wars series is significantly better than the first game, it was still an awesome experience to finally play through the game and actually understand everything without the help of a translation guide.
(11/10)
(11/18) - This was an entertaining little arcade game. I've known about Bulk Slash for years but finally got around to playing the whole game this year. The game is not very long or even that changeling, but it makes up for it with its fun mech combat and its very charming 90s anime aesthetic. It is definitely one of those games that encourages you to replay it over and over to get better scores and different endings but it is still a good time even with just a single playthrough.
