This is an exhaustive list of the games I played this year. They're not really ranked in order but I'd say the first....12 are the ones I had a good time with. I even included the ones I only played for like 30 mins because posterity and all that.
To recap my tweet when I finished this: good game from the series if you've never played any DQ before with the QoL upgrades and simple combat/skill trees. The colours are so vibrant and sharp, lots of wordplay (puns are great and you haters should keep quiet :D)and the characters are not too shabby either. My one regret is not discovering all of the pep combo animations (which are awesome btw)
Finally tackled this series after hearing so much about it and let's just say it's easily one of my favourite JRPG series just from the sheer virtue of the army base development. Recruiting people (108!) actually gives a purpose to the game and the best thing is that you see your base grow into a mini-town with the addition of wings and leisure spaces. It's just so adorable! Augh!
Base building! Enhanced! There are more amazing stuff added now! Seriously, whoever designed the base....you the man (or woman).
Haven't actually finished this but I'm pretty sure I'm halfway in, and all I can say so far is that this is a game with a story that's really well told. To paraphrase a friend, it makes you really feel that there are stakes at matter, and the mystery and drama just draw you in leaving you wanting and see how they affect the entire setting. For me at least, very rarely does a game do that.
I will say that I feel like the army battle algorithm doesn't make sense and seemingly pure RNG-based; also the recruiting felt significantly tougher in this one, but they definitely don't outweigh the amazing-ness of the rest.
The game that made me decide that DQ is one of my favourite series and that I should seek out for more. Granted this is purportedly the best one after VIII so I might be setting myself up for a high bar here but as a new fan it shall be a dream of mine to play through most of them.
I have played the base game 2 years ago but I didn't get the DLCs then until this year. Don't have much to say because everyone knows this game is fantastic.
Also, Heart of Stone > Blood and Wine.
FINALLY I get to try a Yakuza game on PC after seeing all the fun shit people post online. The game is really good if you want glimpse of silly Japanese culture and humour and Yakuza has plenty to share around. I didn't really care for the combat and have definitely thought "ugh can't I just play the mini-games and see the story". But hey, I guess it'll be called Gags 0 if that's the case so I'll have to live with it. Yakuza has some pretty impressive storylines and I most certainly am looking forward to the next chronological PC release (fingers crossed)
What I discovered about myself is that basically if a game makes me want to Google the plot early on it means I'm hooked onto the story. This one managed to do it what with some of the revelations they did (I remember gasping really loudly and I really had to restrain myself from looking the rest up). It's a cool game with cooler characters.
While Velvet is my go-to combatant and possibly the favourite of many people among my friends, I just absolutely adore everything about Magilou and hence why she's the best one hohoho.
If you've played the previous Kan Gao games then definitely give this one a try. As always the story is touching, sad, mysterious and hopeful rolled into one cute adventure game. Music is pretty good too!
If you've played Undertale THEN DEFINITELY GIVE THIS ONE A TRY TOO(CAPS LOCK!!). Actually no, you MUST play this especially if you wanna know more about the history of Frisk/Chara. It's not a complete story yet but it definitely leaves you wondering.
I really should finish this game, and I'm determined to this time(famous last words). Music is awesome, and sneaking/stealing stuff is so much fun :D
Haven't ventured much at all in this one so I couldn't make a comparison to the previous one even if I tried. For now I can say that the music isn't as catchy but they have more interesting characters this time round. Sneaking/stealing is considerably harder in this one :(
Really fun game if you have a bunch of people to play it with, otherwise I personally wouldn't bother trying it. For a good while my cousins, brother and I were playing it every day until one of the cousins decided to be busy with his wedding prep and it all fell apart. HOW DARE HE.
My first Atelier that I also tried because a friend managed to sell the game...Really liked the premise, and I was actually enjoying it until I hit a grind wall and apparently I needed to grind the crafting until I hit a certain alchemy level? Don't remember the details but it ended up feeling a bit too tedious for my patience.
5 mins into my first shift and I was like "whoa wtf is happening?" The amount of things you need to prep + chores were amped up x 10 and while I'm not done with this game yet, it just felt that the entry curve is super steep. While in the first game you have to buy the upgrades to the ingredients, in this one you're given everything from the get-go which makes it really difficult to progressively get better at managing your tasks.
The premise is cool and should be one of my favourite things - farming, ranching, sliming(?) but I found myself getting bored after a couple in-game days of collecting slimes and other stuff. Probably because there are little to none NPC interactions like in traditional farm games so you can really *feel* the monotonous, grindy daily routine. Or maybe I'm not playing it efficiently so everything felt slow and tedious. I'm leaning towards the latter.
Another game which I only spent about 20 mins playing...though this one I just couldn't go on due to personal reasons, namely how my Dad tried to play Grow Home back in mid-2017 when he was recovering at home from his surgery. I'll spare the rest of the sob story but let's just say I can't play this without being reminded that he's not here anymore.
I want to like it, but the controls felt so janky that it just felt frustrating. Also I discovered that I'm not creative when it comes to theme parks :( However I've still not given up on the game; will watch a couple tutorials eventually and try again.
I was reminded that this is a game I played so technically I should include it. Blegh.
