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niflhe

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I'm Keeping Track of Every Game I Played in 2019

Every game I played in 2019, for around an hour or so.

List items

  • Hey look it's a good JRPG with way too much dialogue and an opening chapter that does absolutely zero to continue the cliffhanger from the previous game.

    Seriously, the first chapter after the completely out-of-left field ending of First Chapter is Estelle and co. trying to uncover a ghost at a school. Not exactly high stakes or a riveting plot. I put it down for other games but need to go back to push through the opening few hours.

  • In true Etrian Odyssey fashion, I've made it about a half dozen floors in and have started to rework my team. Mostly I've just replaced the extremely squishy Harbinger with a Dragoon. The hardest part now is just leveling up the Dragoon to a decent level, which is taking a bit longer than I would like.

    Actually forget that, going back to my original party and just going to bust a way through. I've accidentally created a shutdown party and I'm going to destroy this labyrinth. It's probably not the most efficient party I've ever run (considering I only have two fronline attackers - A Harbinger and a Pugilist), but I'm having fun.

  • I bought a EZFlash Omega and had a small micro-SD card laying around, so I decided to play some Survival Kids. I was a huge fan of the "Lost in Blue" series on DS, and was excited to discover that Lost in Blue is the continuation of this series. I played for a few hours, turned the game off, and then discovered that with a flashcart, you have to save the game internally and then wait five seconds before resetting in order to not lose your progress.

    So, Survival Kids may be great, but I'm not going through the intro again.

  • Resident Evil 2 is absolutely fantastic. Play RE2.

  • I have a lot of love for the Resident Evil series. RE4 is one of my favorite games of all time and RE2 is an absolute classic. Code Veronica represents the last "classic" Resident Evil made in the vein of 1, 2, and 3. Tank controls, fixed camera, limited inventory slots, limited saves, byzantine puzzles, etc.

    So it's with all that in mind that I say that I kinda hate Code Veronica. Not to say that it's bad, exactly, with its campy dialogue and greater emphasis on action. It's just a chore to play, almost like the developers thought what Resident Evil needed was more obtuse puzzles instead of just better ones.

    For instance, the first area of the game has this complicated metal detector puzzle where you can't take anything metal through a gate, including guns and ammo. Which, in theory, is a good idea: Strip the player of their items to increase the tension and stakes. The issue, however, is that this happens within the first 20 minutes, where you're still struggling with controls, spacial reasoning, and trying to intuit what the game wants. This doesn't lead to any interesting gameplay decisions, it's just frustrating as you wander back and forth trying to ferry items from one point to another.

    And this is kind of the theme of Code Veronica. There doesn't seem to be an internal logic or inherent fairness. CV wants you to fail and wants you to be frustrated. Maybe I'm just not good enough, but this game doesn't respect my time.

  • I've played almost exactly an hour and yup, it's Yakuza. Need to spend a bit more time in it.

  • I keep trying to like these games and they're just so boring. Sorry Neptune. The gameplay is a relatively decent JPRG, but the writing surrounding it all is just so dull.

  • Just a few matches here or there to establish dominance. Am I the best Titanfall 2 player? No. Will I mess up your day with a default loadout and Tone? Absolutely.

  • Ni no Kuni II is an extremely pretty game, but I've fallen victim to the "push forward" curse again, where you're basically just holding forward for dozens of hours. What I've played so far is fun, though my hands cramp up pretty quickly.

  • A simple, jiggly beat-em-up that I come back to for a few levels at a time and put away. Some people talk about deep characterization (which, hah, no), but I'm just here for some lighthearted action with sexy ninjas.

  • Let's do a Nuzlocke run! And also capture Celebi, because I can probably use that to make some trades.

  • I'm not sure how I feel about Sun/Moon.

    After spending a few more hours with Moon, I'm incredibly split on it. On the one hand, Pokemon has almost never been better - beautiful graphics, a fun new group of Pokemon in a Hawaii based locale, decent story. On the other, the actual act of playing Moon is infuriating, with Pokemon calling for help every other turn and making what should be a simple battle this long, drawn out, never ending grind. Just trying to level up a Cutiefly against a Caterpie took at least 20 minutes. I know you can shut down the SOS calls with status effects, but god it's frustrating. It's so frustrating to play. For every good gameplay decision, there seems to be another seven bad ones.

  • My chill out, self-care game. I travel for work a few times a year and Theatrhythm helps me relax on the plane so that I'm not as stressed out when I travel.

    I finally unlocked all the characters! Jecht was the last one I got.

  • Last year I wrote that "It's easy for everyone to recommend, but hard for anyone to truly love" and I feel like that continues to hold true. It's an absolute blast to play, but I don't have any emotional connection to it, nor do I think about it very often after I'm done playing for an evening. I did end up finishing it sometime this year and enjoyed my time with Spider-Man, but it's the most 4 out of 5 star game I've ever played.

  • Tetris 99 is the game that helped me understand Battle Royales, as a genre. I have two victories and they are cherished memories. It's also two more than my wife has, who always talks up about how much better than me at Tetris she is (and she is - she just goes for four-line clears too much when Tetris 99 seems to reward clearing lines fast).

    I think I ended the year with five victories and my wife had two. I loved Tetris 99 but didn't stick with it beyond the first month or so.

  • I love the Fire Emblem series. From the GBA titles which, along with Advanced Wars, got me hooked on the strategy genre to the poorly voice acted but still fun Gamecube releases, all the way to Awakening which isn't beloved in the community but I still put almost 100 hours into. I love Fire Emblem, at least, up until Fire Emblem Fates with its waifu bullshit, inane story, and dull gameplay. Fates is awful. I cannot stand playing this game for more than a few minutes at a time and even if I skip the story, which I highly recommend, I can barely stomach the gameplay. Do not play Fates.

  • Another really chill game about owning a clothing boutique that doesn't concern itself with clothing sizes or actually making cohesive outfits. I'm not a fashionable guy, but I was always the boy playing dress up with the girls and teased constantly for it, so it's nice to find an outlet that lets me express that side of my personality.

  • It's Etrian Odyssey, but with a bunch of great Persona characters and also some trash ones. I went with the Persona 3 cast, because Persona 3 is the game that really sunk its teeth into me and because the Persona 4 cast has Teddie who can kindly fuck off forever.

    Also the P3 group has Koromaru, who is the best dog.

  • I'm just here to catch Mew, tbh.

  • I put nearly 250 hours in Pokemon X, completing a Living Pokedex. I've put a little bit of time in Alpha Sapphire as part of that, but I think my plan is to just capture every Pokemon I can in game and call it a day.

  • I'm about a dozen hours into Bravely Second and am still really enjoying my time. The new system for unlocking some classes is interesting, wherein you appear to be given the option between one side of a conflict or the other and then are given a corresponding class for your party to play around with. I remember hearing that this game, much like Bravely Default, involves a time looping plot, letting you see the opposite side of the conflicts and unlocking the other half of the classes. It's a neat system and feels like there are actual consequences to your choices - at least in the beginning.

  • Puzzles! I'm stuck towards the end and I just kinda want to finish!

  • Baba is You is one of the freshest and most unique block pushing games I've ever played. By having distinct blocks in each area that correspond to the player, the characters, the environment, and verbs and then pushing those blocks to make new sentences, the game has a ton of promise. So, for instance, if the Goal is behind a Wall, you could theoretically push the blocks to say "Wall is YOU" which makes the player character the wall and you can move the wall to the Goal.

    Unfortunately, later levels do tend to limit this creativity in the aim of having one specific set of moves to follow, and sometimes Baba is You is a little too clever or above my head, but it's still a great game.

  • I played the free demo that came out for a weekend. It's more Splatoon and it's very good.

  • I have no idea where I left off or what battle I was in the middle of, but the Xcom style Mario game is still good!

  • I...hm. I dunno about SSBU. It's more Smash Bros, which I love, but all of my favorite characters (Samus, Ganondorf, Lucina) were rough to use at launch which really turned me off from playing online. Add to that a ver slight single player mode left me wanting. I miss the Subspace Emissary, is what I'm saying.

  • I used to casually speedrun Mega Man 2. I never was the best or the fastest, but I could consistently beat the game in under 40 minutes. I think the record now is around 28, so. I tell you that to tell you that something feels OFF about Mega Man 11. I can't tell if it's Mega Man's movement speed, the way he kinda sticks to the floor, or something about the falling physics, I'm not sure. It doesn't quite feel right.

  • It's Dark Souls but with too much loot! Why is there so much loot? Why am I straight up drowning in hats.

  • I bounced off Mario Maker 2 extremely hard. I never found a comfortable way to build levels and the algorithm never served up interesting levels or ideas. I find myself much more interested in authored Mario experiences than slapdash levels made by the community.

  • Lightning is on the cover but she's only been in the game for like 10 minutes so far. I have my own storied history with FFXIII - buying a used copy on eBay days after it came out for half price only for it to arrive a month later so I spent most of that time watching a roommate beat his copy in a couple of days. It was his first JRPG and he seemed to really love it, so I was surprised when I finally got to play mine and holy shit I hated it. I love how bold XIII tries to be, but that's about the only thing I appreciate about it.

    XIII-2 is a complete course correction for XIII and I love a lot of what it does. Serah is a much more fun and bubbly protagonist and the stoic Lightning. Serah's freewheeling spirit clashes with her partner, the more subdued Noel, for a lot of really good, heartwarming scenes. The game is a mix of Pokemon and FFXIII with a bunch of time traveling, taking the core battle system of XIII and improving it. The story is honestly whatever, I'm kinda just here to see a Blue Chocobo kick ass across time. It's great, but hard to recommend depending on your feelings on XIII.

  • Surprisingly, the best part of Watch_Dogs 2 is the character writing. The gameplay is decent, but tends to get old a little too quickly for my tastes. The story of hackers taking on a megacorporation hellbent on domination and fighting against tech culture but winning through the power of information seemed a bit cutesy in 2016 and downright naive in 2019.

  • Devil May Cry 2 can't be *that* bad, can it?

    It can. God. How did this series get to three games when the second is godawful.

    And what kills me is there's this really interesting story going on but the act of playing it is just gross.

  • I bought the Devil May Cry collection to prepare myself for eventually playing DMCV. DMC1 doesn't hold up the best, but it DOES thankfully fix the "Triangle to Jump" issue that kept me from really enjoying the game previously.

    I ended up using the gauntlets a lot more than the sword.

  • The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a sidescrolling brawler in the vein of a River City Ransom that lets you play out your fantasies of being a delinquent Japanese high-schooler. Do you want to go to school and try to get better grades to pull yourself out of the mire you've dug yourself into, do you want to spend your mornings and nights training to improve how well you punch dudes, or would you just like to sit on a bench by the river reading Anna Karenina.

    Games with complete freedom like this used to scare me a bit, to be honest. What am I going to do if I can't min/max everything, how can I win, how will I know when I'm satisfied?

    As it turns out, Ringo Ishikawa is a lot like life - you can't always min/max everything and even if you know the right answer to a problem, even if you know what you need to do is get off your ass and just do *something* goddammit, what you really, truly need sometimes to do is play some Nintendo games with your closest friends to just unwind from the stress of daily existence. And that's okay.

  • Sometimes you just need a chill driving game.

  • My wife asked me to pick this game up as she was into the style of it. I, unfortunately, am not into the style of point-and-click adventure Bertram Fiddle is putting down.

  • This conjured up a love of Power Rangers long since forgotten to the point where I started watching random Power Rangers shows. Power Rangers is cool.

  • More Hitman! I finally made it to the final map after re-leveling up the Hitman 1 content back to level 20 mastery. The Hitman 2 maps are good, but I find that they're almost too complicated. Hawke's Bay is bad, Miami and Santa Fortuna are okay, Mumbai and Whittleton creek are fantastic, and I haven't explored enough of Asshole Island to form a final conclusion yet.

  • As a long-time Fire Emblem fan, Three Houses is one of the greatest Fire Emblem games ever made. The characters are charming and the inclusion of three separate campaigns in one well made game is fantastic. In my first playthrough, I went with Claude and the Golden Deer and fell in love with them so much that by the time I finished and wanted to start a second campaign, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I felt like I was betraying my friends. Claude, Lorenz, Leonie, Raphael, Lysithea, Ignatz, Hilda, and Marianne, all of them were close friends that I couldn't bear to be without. I also cared about the storyline in a Fire Emblem for the first time since maybe the first US release of one and felt a sense of guilt when killing members of the other houses I had grown close with but didn't recruit (sorry Petra, you seem rad as hell). My own character fell in love with Marianne, the stereotypical sad girl what loves animals because I have a type, apparently.

    The gameplay of Three Houses falls a little short, by Fire Emblem and tactical standards. The normal difficulty is easy peasy and the Hard difficulty isn't much to speak of. I was able to direct my party of stone cold killers with little worry while making sure to rewind a couple of turns here or there if things went south. Claude might be one of the strongest Lords in recent memory and Lysithea is a stone cold killer. I found a relic early on that increased her range to four tiles, which means that every time her turn came up, someone died. Even Marianne, who is frail and fragile, ran a clinic on murdering fools.

  • Only spent an hour with Bloodstained but it seems rad! It's on a lot of people's GotY lists, which means I should get back to it to see what the fuss is about.

  • A classic Castlevania game in the style of Castlevania 3. Very good, though the 'best' ending requires you to play through the entire game which I haven't set down and done yet.

  • My go-to commute game for most of 2019, it's Picross but with Konami characters and icons. I turned off the music pretty quickly because while it's neat, I like to listen to podcasts while commuting.

  • Falcom makes really good JRPGs and likeable protagonists. Tokyo Xanadu plays like a mixture of Ys and Trials of Cold Steel, but isn't quite as strong as either of those series.

  • I meant to play through one of the new campaigns but just ended up playing through the main Shovel Knight story again. Shovel Knight is so good.

  • Mario Kart 8 is a really good podcast game.

  • Yakuza 6 looks amazing, but I miss the stylish presentation of Zero and the ability to sometimes move the story along just a bit faster.

  • I think I like Shenmue?

  • Trying out a Nuzlocke run of Sapphire! I'm right before Winona and terrified of that Altaria, though I've only lost a Pelipper and a Cascoon so far. I might have broken things a bit by realizing both that EVs finally exist and that Whismur gives 1 HP EV. Everyone has max HP investment now.

  • Ever since I was a kid, I had this fear of the neverending expansion of the universe. What was it expanding from and what is it expanding into? What does eternity and infinity mean and how can someone as small as I comprehend the true nature of either of those words? Space was terrifying to me and thinking about it really upset me. Still does, if I let my mind wander too much to focus on death.

    I'm not going to say that Outer Wilds calmed those childhood fears of mine that still creep up from time to time. What Outer Wilds did do, though, is show me the beauty and magnificence of space. That what we do has meaning, pushing against the impossible, even if you're only one person, especially if you're only one person, has worth.

    If I think back, I'm sitting in the back row of a church, pushing the right arrow key on a computer to move a powerpoint presentation forward so that the audience can sing along with the lyrics. I'm in the rickety wooden spaceship, crashing headfirst into the sun, staring into the infinite as the star evaporates. I solve the time loop, knowing the right sequence of planets to go to. I'm on the floor, kneeling, crying, because I don't know what it is I'm meant to do, why we're born just so that we can die. I'm in the delivery room, watching my daughter being born, being coerced to cut the cord. I observe the universe, making it manifest.

    I understand now.

  • It's really weird shooting guns in locations I recognize, not more than a couple of blocks from my office, down streets I took my wife on dates, or past buildings I've stared at in wonder. How's the game, though, niflhe?

    I think it's fine.

  • I still don't think Hollow Knight is a great Metroidvania and the exploration is still punishing, but knowing where to go and what to do helps improve my enjoyment of Hollow Knight a bunch.

  • VI might be my least favorite Dragon Quest?

  • I am not very good at Astral Chain, but at least I'm having a good time.

  • Pokemon meets Monster Hunter! It's cute but also kinda easy and the beginning lasts a really long time so I haven't gotten to the meat of the game yet.

  • I don't remember playing this in 2019, but my PS4 said I did, so I must've.

  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX is one of my favorite Game Boy Color games. Link washes up on a mysterious island after his ship crashes and adventures through a weird, ethereal world. The relationship with Marin is top notch and I love the interactions Link has with the townfolk. Almost every Zelda game owes something to Link's Awakening originated and perfected. If you'd ask me what my favorite Zelda game is, I'd probably say Link's Awakening.

    I don't think I like the remake that much. The visual style is fantastic, but also takes me out of connecting with the characters and townsfolk. Its feels like I'm playing with toys instead of going on an adventure. The tilt-shift effect used to replicate the screen by screen effect of the original is obnoxious and I found it really surprising that instead of improving on the original (which had some rough spots, to be sure), the remake is literally just the old game with a new visual style and hitching in places. I even went back and played a bit of the original Game Boy version just to make sure I wasn't going crazy and it felt so much better to play.

    They even got rid of the photographer! He was the best part of DX! Come on!

  • Minecraft meet Dragon Quest!

  • Dragon Quest XI is phenomenal and everyone should play it.

  • A fun, but not exactly stellar, game involving parallel worlds with a portal that opens once a generation where your ill-dressed character, Jun, is allowed to pass through. The main gameplay is split between talking with your monster world friends and then real-time combat on a grid of symbols that you can match to cast spells.

  • My grandfather died when I was 21. He was always quiet, but with a sharp sense of humor, the kind of grandpa who would turn down his hearing aid to enjoy a scene of children playing, but didn't necessarily want to hear them screaming the entire time. When he died, the grandchildren were given the opportunity to go through his things, take anything we wanted, he would've given it to us anyway if we'd ask, but now we had the chance to take some small part of him with us.

    I found out a lot about my grandfather through that small act of rummaging through his belongings and getting to know the man I only had a glimpse of. He was a huge fan of the Atlanta Braves, almost primarily because they're the only major league baseball team you can actually go see a game of if you live in the deep south. But, whether by irony or by confusion or by a bit more racism than I'm comfortable admitting, all of his baseball caps were of Chief Wahoo. I'd like to think he thought it was funny intentionally wearing the wrong cap to a baseball game. It's the same reason I like to wear minor league baseball hats to major league games. Everyone is going to wear an Orioles hat, so why not wear a Shorebirds hat just to stick out a little.

    Anyway. What Remains of Edith Finch is a lot like that. More fantastically, more narratively interesting than finding a particularly nice suit that you used to interview for a job that brought you closer to the woman you loved, but basically like that.

  • That's some good Sonic right there, I'll tell you what.

  • God I hate the writing and the swimminess and every character in this game, jesus christ I just can't, oh my god.

  • Only a handful of chapters in and had to take a break since I was still put off by DMC2. It's on my list to play in 2020.

  • It's a dungeon crawler, a la Etrian Odyssey, but didn't grab me. Look, y'all, I play some anime trash sometimes, but I have to draw the line somewhere. The line is apparently "anime girls with gigantic breasts who breathe, but only their breasts undulate".

  • I should have drawn the line a liiiiittle further back.

  • I love Robotron and man I love Nex Machina. No idea what's going on at any point, and I kinda love that.

  • this is not a good game.

  • Kingdom Hearts III came out in 2019 and I still haven't played it yet. I bought it, it's sitting in its case, but I'm waiting to play through the entire series again because I'm an idiot and also because there's DLC that will add in the Final Fantasy characters (what the HELL Square-Enix)

    Kingdom Hearts II.5 is a fantastic game. I only ever played it once back in the day, whereas I played through the first Kingdom Hearts at least four times, so I was surprised by how much I did or didn't remember about KHII. Things I remembered: Visiting every world twice, how absurd Jiminy's notebook is when going for 100% completion, party member Riku. Things I did not remember: Visiting every world twice means the game is horribly paced, how bad all of these minigames are, and Riku's outfit.

    I've beaten almost the entire game and most of the bonus bosses (at least, the first time through - I don't think I'm going to do the Data fights) and finally beat Sephiroth. Now all that's left is to finish it up.

  • Part of my entire Kingdom Hearts series replay.

  • When the game's not talking at you Dream Team is great. I still have no idea what's going on and it's been like 20 hours, though.
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