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@counterclockwork87: It being on Wii U really did it a disservice. Here's hoping for an eventual Switch port. If the Switch does well, of course.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions was my GOTY, too!

Your analysis was much more in-depth than mine, and it's a great read, too!

I think the battle system is where the game shines over the story and characters, but I do like your read on it, and it is true that this "adult fear" isn't something many video games tackle. I was really glad the game came out the way it did. A more standard crossover title would have been significantly less interesting or fun to play than what we got instead.

@wumbo3000: The characters and story were absolutely weak, no doubt about that. But as you said, that battle system was fantastic and carried the game through it. That and all of the insane special attacks. Like the bull one. That was awesome.

@justin258: It was a really refreshing RPG for me. I'm a fan of the Tales games, but the last few releases just haven't done it for me, and I was worried I was just done with the format. But Tokyo Mirage Sessions proved to me that there's still a lot of fun to be had with the genre.

@cav829: I actually found myself watching the special moves all the way through almost every time, because they were so fun to watch, even though they were long and skippable. The regular combat animations taking too long is definitely an issue, though.

@thewildcard: Those are totally fair criticisms. For me, that battle system carried the weaker aspects of the game for me, along with the J-pop aesthetic. I'm not even into J-pop, but it was a ton of fun to feel like I was while I played this game. But yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from. TMS is absolutely not perfect by any means, and Persona 5 is sure to blow it out of the water when I play it this year.

@sku: Ooooh yeah, it super does. And it's super broken right now. They have a semi-regular competitive thing (which is just a high score table, really) that gives out rewards to players who rank higher in it, and the rewards are preeeeetty invaluable. As things are now, there's basically only one strategy you can use to get tier 1 rewards, and anyone without access to that strategy is pretty much boned.

I'm incredibly weak when it comes to horror, so I stay as far away from it as possible.

I got nightmares after watching that film adaptation (I'd barely call it that, since it shares little aside from a name with the book) of I Am Legend as a kid (somewhere around 13-14 years old? I can't remember and I don't want to look up the release date) and that movie isn't scary at all, relatively speaking. Either way, I have avoided seeing anything marketed as scary the best I can since that day.

My friends in high school forced me to watch the Rob Zombie adaptation of Halloween, which did in fact make me have horrible nightmares for months, but I remember knowing as I was watching it that it was pretty dumb and not actually that frightening. But yeah, still managed to disturb me. I think the thing that actually stuck with me from that movie wasn't any of the more graphic stuff; it was the kid killing the rats in the sink. I don't know. Something about that messed me up.

That was probably like 6 years ago or so now, and I legitimately haven't watched, read, or played anything even remotely scary since. I'm way, way too sensitive to it.

@kovie: Silent Hill on your mobile device. Pyramid Head top-tier rarity.

@sku: Limited gachas are nightmares. Everyone in the ToL community is trying to hold onto their stones for the inevitable New Year's gacha, since the one they had in Japan last year was one of the best gachas they've had. The problem is that in the interim, they've got these event missions going on that only allow you to use water-element units (elements are randomly assigned to a unit when you get them and cannot be changed, ever) and are simultaneously running a gacha that only dispenses water units, which also has its own share of limited units. This event gives out items that look like they're going to be essential for the future meta of the game, so if you don't have a good team of water units, which is 100% random as to whether or not you do, you're either totally fucked forever or you have to give them money. Really great stuff happening.

@mindbullet: Puzzle and Dragons is a legitimately good game, I think, and while their business model is still poisonous, there's that tiny amount of restraint they appear to have with it that makes it feel less bad. They haven't implemented the x10 roll yet, and not having (most) of their units be based on any franchise in particular makes it sting a little less when you don't get exactly what you want. Maybe because when you roll in PAD, you're rolling for something good in general, and not something specific. These games with a license attached to them, though... I mean, it's all bad news. But PAD is not nearly as rotten as most of these other games are, and PAD also has the gameplay to back it up. Which ToL does NOT.

To be fair, I also don't like Tales of Link. I'll probably get into Xillia on another post, but I see your point and I probably should have linked to Dawn of the New World instead, since that one is a bit more... I mean, you know. Universally disliked. I don't think I'm shaking things up with that opinion.

It's really tough for me to buy full-priced games anymore. I basically don't do it at all save for one or two exceptions a year. This year, I bought Pokemon at full price. Anything else new that played I either found on sale, split with a younger sibling, or got as a gift. It's frustrating, because there's stuff I'm dying to play, but can't afford (Dishonored2Dishonored2Dishonored2).

It is a lot easier for me to just find a free game and mess around with it than it is for me to drop 40-60$ on, well, anything right now. The problem is that I would be the exact target audience for microtransactions if I actually had money, and cannot resist spending at least a buck or two on free games, even ones I don't think I'm going to stick with. It's bad. And gachas get me harder than anything. I played Puzzle and Dragons for over a year and I have no idea, nor do I want to know, how much I spent on it. Now I basically just check on it every week or so, if only out of obligation to look at all my rad stuff in it.

I think the thing that makes rolling in Tales of Link feel so bad is that 10x roll system. Having to drop 50 stones for even a chance at getting any decent characters is painful. Even then, each gacha only has about four heroes that are unique to it, and even if you get lucky and pull a "rare" unit, the odds are that it's from the pool of units that every gacha shares. Someone did the math, and the odds of getting a specific hero when doing a 10x roll are sub-1%, if I remember correctly. It's pretty awful.

I'm glad I already own a copy, but yeah. This is pretty lame.

Ghost Trick. Ghoooost Triiiick.

I mean, it's obviously pretty clear that I'm way into the game.

But I do seriously recommend it to anyone who is asking for recommendations. I don't, like, push it onto people who aren't looking for it. But Ghost Trick is so rad. It's not my favorite game of all time, by any means, but most of those are pretty old and I find that the disappointment I feel when someone drops a game after 15 minutes due to its lack of modern graphics or other "antiquated" features is pretty real. I think Ghost Trick is less likely to do that to people than other games I like. It's also on iOS, which means people don't have to go out and buy a system to try it out. Oh, and the first chapter is free, too. So they don't even have to invest money into trying it out.

See, there's me upselling it again.

Oh, there's also the fact that not a lot of people have played it and it deserves more love and I want more games like it to be made. By the people who made it, specifically.

I might be doing this. Having never made a game or done anything in my life that would make me know how to make one. I have some dumb ideas and I'm kinda interested. It kinda depends on the theme, though, I'm not super confident in my ability to do much outside of... like, Twine or something.

I'm going to be as noncommittal as it gets until the day it happens, then I'll decide for real if I'm going to do it or not and stick with my decision.