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Twelve Incredible Games Played in 2021 That Were Not From 2021 (Except for One of Them)

Yo, I played some video games this year. Weird. Unfortunately, I've played very few from the year itself, so I'll be reserving most of January to do some last-minute (well, post-last-minute) cramming to get myself up to an adequate list of ten. However, since this is the end of the year and all I figured I should at least put something up as a GOTY-related placeholder.

So, to celebrate what turned out to be a fantastic year of not-particularly-current gaming, here's twelve exceptional games I played in 2021 that, well, were not released in 2021 for the most part. I've gone with one choice per month to create a sort of "year in review" retrospective.

(And, yeah, I kinda stole this idea from ArbitraryWater. He does these "old GOTY" lists every year too, along with his actual GOTY. I probably should've stolen it earlier. Honestly, I should just steal more in general. There's a new year's resolution.)

(Also, also, many of these games will turn up in the soon-to-be-tweaked GOTY (Adjusted) series. I've linked to the 2019 list here, which also has links to all the previous, but I should have a newly minted 2020 list ready to go sometime after the new year. In fact why don't I throw in this year's List of Games Beaten for more rundowns and the also-rans.)

List items

1. Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin

Played: January.
Original Release Year: 2020.
Runner-up: Operencia: The Stolen Sun.
January is a perfect time for a slow farming game, and Sakuna's chief strength is that it can simultaneously be a slow farming game on top of a frantic action platformer with tons of combos, juggles, and grapple-based platforming. I learned more about sowing, growing, reaping, threshing, and hulling high quality rice than I ever expected I would in this lifetime and the game embodies this hardscrabble attitude where you work hard for every boon that can be very rewarding. Similarly rewarding is a thoughtful story that sees a spoiled goddess learn the value of toil and effort by eking out a living on an island full of demons with a gaggle of mortal companions, and those quiet scenes where everyone sits around to eat the dinner you prepared while discussing the day are where the game shines brightest.
Operencia's an otherwise fine modern Wizardry clone that, due to my trophy-hunting predilection, became something of a Professor Moriarty with its ingenuously insidious encounter design when played on the highest difficulty level. I very rarely recommend harder settings in games, but it's often where the developers can be seen at their most cunning.
2. Ys: Memories of Celceta

Played: February.
Original Release Year: 2013.
Runner-up: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
Ys is a never-miss franchise for me and Celceta is where the series started emphasizing exploration and being rewarded for obsessively poking around dead-ends and alternative routes. Literally in Celceta's case, as there's useful items given away after every milestone of map % completion. Celceta doesn't really stand out compared to its immediate series neighbors Ys VII and Ys VIII - the former being the originator of the newer party-based approach and the latter currently the series peak - but still retains all the best qualities of the series: the rapid arcade combat, the fantastic rock soundtracks, and the sheer uncomplicated fun that presents an antithesis of the archetypal JRPG with its overly complex mechanics and/or languid pacing to deal with.
Hellblade is a wonderfully atmospheric action-adventure game that sticks around just as long as it needs to, giving you a few timing-based fights and some glyph-seeking puzzles to break up the long narrative stretches as Celtic heroine Senua struggles to retain her sanity in a land of shadows and demons. The intimate and vulnerable portrayal of its protagonist by Melina Juergens is of special note, and it's wild to think she was only meant to be a temporary stand-in.
3. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Played: March.
Original Release Year: 2018.
Runner-up: Outer Wilds.
Dragon Quest is a franchise that began like Final Fantasy in that every new entry featured some bold mechanical innovations, but eventually settled into its current long-term role as a nostalgic institution for Japanese RPG aficionados. Dragon Quest XI subsequently doesn't do too much that's terribly new or exciting but is so solidly made with an extravagantly-produced presentation that it has the rare quality of being a "AAA" JRPG in an era when so few are still produced. Its love of puns, an excellent cast of idiosyncratic characters with accents from all across Europe, smartly streamlined combat and character progression, and an emotional maturity at its core made it such a joy to play throughout its long runtime and thus a perfect candidate for a lockdown/quarantine game.
I doubt I'll ever fully see eye-to-eye with Outer Wilds, given a relative lack of polish and quality-of-life touches, but those novice flaws are partly what makes it so remarkable and memorable. It bucks trends and creates a time-loop adventure mystery powered by an oppressive atmosphere and terrifying revelations while never diminishing its beating heart that is its community of friendly, musically-inclined, curious explorers witnessing the sudden, shocking end of the universe. It has the sort of incongruously calm approach to the apocalypse that invites you to pull up a deckchair next to a campfire with a bag of marshmallows and a beer to watch the sun explode.
4. Judgment

Played: April.
Original Release Year: 2019.
Runner-up: Aggelos.
Though weaker than the core Yakuza franchise in some ways - there's far too much emphasis on tedious tailing missions, and having hard-to-cure "mortal wounds" after getting shot or seriously injured evokes irritation more than any sense of verisimilitude - Judgment benefits from a much more focused twisty serial killer mystery plot and a charismatic down-on-his-luck private detective and his gregarious sidekick at the heart of it. I particularly liked the revamped combat too, incorporating the alternative styles of Yakuza 0/Kiwami with an overall faster and more flowing tempo. Looking forward to trying its sequel sometime in 2022.
Aggelos was just a solid throwback explormer that I played in a year that didn't lack for new ones; if nothing else, it made me feel slightly less FOMO-y about the map-based platforming bounties offered by 2021 (i.e. Metroid Dread, Ender Lilies, Astalon, FIST, et al) I've yet to pick up.
5. Tales of Graces F

Played: May.
Original Release Year: 2012.
Runner-up: Enclave.
This Graces F playthrough was spurred on by the newly released Tales of Arise and having many, many reminders that Tales is a franchise that exists. I'd actually put off Graces F for a while given its lukewarm reputation, prioritizing entries like Xillia and Berseria instead, and it was only when I played it through to completion across the entirety of May 2021 that I realized my error. Graces F is quite possibly my favorite Tales game, or at least out of the eleven I've had the fortune to complete. While its team of anime archetypes is a little weaker than average (excepting Malik) the brilliant new mechanical inclusions are some of the franchise's best, in particular the versatile Eleth Mixer, its parry/counter-heavy interpretation of the series-wide LMB System, and its Title-enabled character development.
Enclave was a pleasant May Maturity throwback surprise, joining the likes of Severance: Blade of Darkness from a couple years back as an early precursor to the sort of deliberate and difficult action-RPGs that would later find greater traction with FromSoftware's sadistic hand at the tiller. You really had to take each of those levels slowly and prepare for every ambush and trap, all the while hunting for every bit of coin for necessary upgrades, and it was as invigorating as it was occasionally frustrating.
6. Blasphemous

Played: June.
Original Release Year: 2019.
Runner-up: Ori and the Will of the Wisps.
June was largely a month spent with a few Indie explormers, with Blasphemous leading the field. Set in a grisly version of Catholic Spain where everyone is moribund about scriptures and sacraments, the Penitent One steadfastly marches across various churches, cathedrals, and catacombs to bring salvation to the wicked. Its grim tone is perfect for the type of experience it offers and while the platforming feels a bit chunky in parts, largely due to having an armored protagonist with a noticeable weight to them, the deliberate combat is top-notch. It's also one of the more visually stunning games of its particular type, with its exceptional grasp of pixel art bringing to life some really messed-up looking enemies. One note: it's big on parries, so if they were your least favorite part of Bloodborne maybe caveat emptor (this game loves Latin too).
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a much bigger and more elaborately designed sequel to Blind Forest but feels a little less original also. It still retains what made the first game special - the beautiful, soulful presentation and some very slick platforming - but for whatever reason it didn't quite make the same impact.
7. The House in Fata Morgana

Played: July.
Original Release Year: 2016.
Runner-up: Unavowed.
Exquisite and bleak in equal measure, the visual novel The House in Fata Morgana tells a series of doomed love stories across history with each couple torn asunder by issues both in and out of their control. What makes this game pop is the presentation: the art design is eccentric but gorgeous and the melodic tri-lingual soundtrack does so much of the tonal heavy lifting. As long as you accept that it's a mostly passive affair, even as far as visual novels go, it's a good place to start if you wanted to understand the strength of this mostly underappreciated genre.
Unavowed, meanwhile, is as traditional as point-and-click adventure games can get, but stands tall as one of Wadjet's finest: not only does it offer a compelling premise of a group of clandestine supernatural troubleshooters, each with their own baggage to resolve, but has built each of its scenarios in such a way that different groups of companions have different approaches to the puzzles, giving you ample reason to start over with new team dynamics to see how else you could've surpassed these obstacles. It has some of the best writing, characterization, and voice acting the studio has done also.
8. Hypnospace Outlaw

Played: August.
Original Release Year: 2019.
Runner-up: Weird and Unfortunate Things.
Hypnospace is like Return of the Obra Dinn in that, even putting aside the many individual strengths of those games, is valuable simply for being one-of-a-kind. There are no other games I can recall where the goal is to trawl a parodic interpretation of late-'90s internet, with all its webrings, animated gifs, and visitor counters, to look for problematic behavior and other undesirables. There's a story at its core that grows ever more intriguing but the main thrust is websurfing any number of imaginative, hilarious, and occasionally disturbing websites that keenly understand what the internet was like back then in its untamed halcyon days. My favorite part as an OCD dweeb is an in-game tracker that tells you how much of the Hypnospace you've so far discovered as an incentive to keep hunting for links.
Weird and Unfortunate Things is yet another reminder of the vast, unexplored territory that is the RPG Maker community - who often put out their games for free, as was the case with this - and how many gems exist to be found out in that low-budget wilderness. Inspired by Lovecraft, the Mother series, and earlier homages to same like OFF and Undertale, WaUT is a comedic yet sinister turn-based RPG with some smart ideas to keep its combat fresh - I'm more or less done with random encounters in RPGs, but the game figured out how to make them palatable by limiting their presence - with a catchy, eclectic soundtrack.
9. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd

Played: September.
Original Release Year: 2017.
Runner-up: UnderRail.
I'm sure everyone has someone in their online friend circle trying to get them into Trails, in much the same way Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has its very vocal proponents, but despite catching the zeitgeist when Trails in the Sky FC was newly localized I've been slow to catch up with the rest. With official Crossbell localizations finally on the horizon (that would be Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure) it was time to regain some ground and see off the original Trails in the Sky trilogy. The 3rd suffers a little by its mostly inessential self-contained plot and strange virtual dungeon setting, but recovers its step with the fantastic turn-order-manipulating combat system brought over from the second game (which polished the same system from the first) and some very shrewd table-setting for the series' future enterprises, establishing the importance of Crossbell's strategic placement between all the larger nations and Erebonia's soon-to-occur revolt against its oppressive ruling class - the respective subjects of the seven Trails games to follow. Maybe also the best soundtrack I heard this year, especially between its final dungeon and final boss.
UnderRail is much like Operencia, above, in that it immediately established an antagonistic relationship with the player (me, in this case) with its absurd level of difficulty. It made me shape up and knock the rust off as a self-avowed RPG expert, taking every advantage I could muster to survive battles against overwhelming numbers or insidious AI behavior (like the hated stealth scorpions, for one). The sort of RPG that had me habitually using consumable items in every battle, despite usually being the type to let them all sit uselessly in my inventory until the game was over "just in case I needed them later." Its combination of a Metro-style underworld of radioactive mutant horrors and the older Fallouts' "action point" combat system and isometric perspective was agreeably nostalgic.
10. Dragon Quest Builders 2

Played: October
Original Release Year: 2019.
Runner-up: Detention.
There are Minecraft-style games to which you can simply lose entire weeks. Terraria was one of those for me, but the first Dragon Quest Builders not so much due to the irksome way it tossed out all your architectural creations between worlds as part of its episodic narrative approach. DQB2 addressed that shortcoming with a persistent land mass you could return to between the insular story-based ones, and added so many more ideas and blueprints and side-questing that it was practically overwhelming. As an example one of the more entertaining features, where you build homes for NPCs to their specifications a la Animal Crossing's Happy Home Designer, was something you'd only unlock towards the end of the game and probably by accident. If these crafting games only last you until you run out of new stuff to do and make, DQB2 might be as close to endless as any of them.
Detention highlighted the importance of welcoming new voices from underrepresented countries to the Indie scene, with its small Taiwanese developer running into no small number of problems getting their games out there against Chinese governmental censorship and western digital storefront owners meekly kowtowing to same. As a teenage girl trapped in a haunted school, Detention presents itself as one story before settling into something else entirely, and that change is so gradual and masterfully executed to be worth seeing play out on your own. I'm going to have to figure out how to play their subsequent game Devotion before too long.
11. Scarlet Nexus

Played: November.
Original Release Year: 2021.
Runner-up: The Gardens Between.
While strictly speaking the purpose of this list was to cover non-2021 games, I did eventually find my way to playing one this year. Scarlet Nexus is what happens when the Tales developers at Namco Bandai decided they liked Remedy's Control so much they wanted to make their own anime-fied version. The result is a "brainpunk" post-apocalyptic action-RPG that has you strafing around bizarre monsters looking for an opportunity to telekinetically throw debris at a weak point, disable it with pyrokinesis or electrokinesis, or turn yourself invisible or super speedy to press the advantage. While it could use a little more polish, the psychic combat is exhiliarating when you're on its wavelength, quickly settling battles by hitting enemies with powerful combos and finishing them off with showy "brain crush" maneuvers one after the other. It's a tentpole that's sturdy enough to support the game's otherwise weaker writing and characterization (the amount of times I wanted to yeet Shiden off a bridge...).
The Gardens Between was sadly too short for my liking, but if that's a negative it's only because I wanted more of its intelligent chronologically-minded conundrums to solve. Moving diorama-like scenes forwards and backwards through time, changing elements or carrying them with you, it's a hard puzzle-solving process to describe but one that works well once you've wrapped your brain around it. Very cute story about the power of friendship and memories too.
12. Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection

Played: December.
Original Release Year: 2017.
Runner-up: Pepper's Puzzles.
I wasn't expecting much from The Ilvard Insurrection, the third Falcom RPG I played this year, given that I'd dropped off its repetitive predecessor The Arges Adventure some time ago. However, it happily proved my apprehension to be unfounded, as it more confidently embraced the dungeon-crawling action of its predecessor and the similar Ys games and layered on top an irreverent personality brought to life by an exceptional localization that really helped to endear me to its world, its characters, and its whole vibe. In fact, I'm more inclined now to hop back into The Arges Adventure to see if the issue was with me. Also, and this is redundant for Falcom but I'm going to say it anyway, the soundtrack kicked so much ass and you better believe I poached all its BGM .ogg files from the directory the moment it was over.
There are times like the busy holiday period where I just want to unwind with a good picross game, something I can more or less do on auto-pilot at this point in my life, and Pepper's Puzzles is one of the better nonogram-'em-ups I've found on the Steam store. Like its peer Paint it Back!, Pepper's Puzzles has a silly sense of humor that lends itself to some imaginative puzzle ideas, a solid foundation of quality-of-life features, multiple odd grid sizes and alternative modes to maintain long-term interest, and intuitively understands what makes for a good picross which is an important if elusive thing to get right.