As it has turns out there has personally never has been a better time for me to playing video games than 2017. The combo of first year of full time employment and not being a STEM major meant I had just the right combo of available funds and free time to play more games than I have in just about any other year. I also happened to pick up a PS4 this year so there is some catching up on what I missed on the platform on this list. I ended up playing enough games to in fact build an ordered list of games I played this year. So I will do just that. There will be spoilers.

13. Final Fantasy XV

FFXV has the distinct honor of being probably the worst video game I have played to completion. I am dyed in the wool Final Fantasy fan. I don't believe the series has dead yet. I liked FFXIII a great deal and it ranks pretty high among the Final Fantasy to me. This all is to say the I went into this game open minded and gave it the biggest chance I could.

FFXV might just be the greatest boondongle in the history of gaming. A decade of development as a flagship game of a major publisher just sucking in time, money, and talent and what came out the other side was something completely devoid of any merit. The only good thing I really have to say about it is that you can feel the games ample development in that it is the basically video game equivalent of Disney's Star Wars in feel.

The developers of FFXV just never stumbled upon a single good or exciting idea or element at all.

The combat is probably the most bland, boring, and unresponsive takes on character action I have ever seen. It made all the complaints about NieR's combat I have seen this year pretty laughable by comparison.

They added magic systems on top that basically amounted to a grenade you can toss in combat that came with a whole massive magic crafting system that promises all sorts of depth but was otherwise shallow and uninteresting busy work of slapping as much of an element as you can and scrolling through every item in the game to add the best uninteresting modifier you can find.

There's also summons you can do that look cool but have the most esoteric conditions to summon that you'll basically never see them. You have the party member abilities of which one is actually useful and it also happens to be the one they lock you out of towards the end of the game, great! There is a whole ability tree of the most unexciting sounding upgrades possible that I would go long swaths of the game forgetting to spend my points in there because there was nothing on there that I actually was driven to want.

There really isn't much to the actual moment to moment story of FFXV. Basically nothing surprising or important occurs in the whole of the opening open world section of the game that makes up the bulk of FFXV. None of the massive set of side quests ever actually contribute anything story wise. After that everything is short and truncated in a way that it can't have any impact. I fell like I got more story from the anime and the movie than I did from the actual game itself. They built out a whole world, lore, and large set of characters just nothing is done with them. Lunafreya the character as important as the main character Noctis in the world immediately dead on arrival. The evil empire that is built up to be the main villains entirely dead and collapsed in the time it take from the start of the game to when you reach them. They pull an entire World of Ruin you get to explore for like less than an hour. I

In the end FFXV is just a waste of a game. It was a waste of my time to play it. It was a waste of 10 years of development. It was waste of the spin off media they made for it. It is waste they they continue to expended effort to add to the game. It is the worst Final Fantasy game ever made. FFII's leveling system was at least an interesting novel idea in a terrible game. FFXV is not terrible it's just a nothing game which even worse in my opinion. I promise the rest of the entries on this list will be way shorter. I needed to at least get something out of all the time I wasted on this game.

12. Gundam Versus presents fighting games I didn't play enough to include on this list.

I like Gundam which something you will hear about later on this list. Gundam Versus is a fun game. I got to give some fools that UNIVERSE! Enough said.

This was going to be the year I was going to get into Guilty Gear with Xrd rev2. I spent some time in the lab picked out a main. Got online for a bit never won a single round. Got distracted by all the games coming out this year. I also played some BlazBlue: Central Fiction which might be more my speed than Guilty Gear currently is but I barely touched it. Anyways Arc System Works are doing a great job. Dragon Ball FighterZ will surely be the Arc System Works fighter that I finally get competent at.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is not the MvC game I am longing for but I liked it more than I thought I would. Never ended up playing much of it though.

11. Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel

Early in the year I picked this game up on steam and I played it solidly for about a month. I was totally number 1 on the leader boards not just because of that bug they had where player's would swap stats. Ok it was totally just that. Anyways Nitropluc Blasterz is a very good game. It is probably the easiest anime fighter to pick up and play outside of P4A. It is in that gap between Street Fighter and anime fighters.

10. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

I found some time at the end of the year to squeeze in Danganronpa which had been sitting in my steam library for a while. The Persona meets Phoenix Wright mix it has going is pretty great. The story is fun and engaging. Turns out like others have told you before is true Danganronpa is a good game. You should play it sometime.

9. Life Is Strange: Before the Storm

There is absolutely no good reason why this game this game should exist and the game doesn't give you a reason why it should either. In spite of that however Deck Nine made a game that I was glad to play. They got those episode out real snappy. It was nice episodic thing to have to comeback to. No one needs to play this game that shouldn't even exist in the first place but if you are looking to fill some time and liked the original Life is Strange you should check out this game.

8. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

This is the right game at the right time. The story of this game has been talked about to death at this point so I won't add to that discussion. So I'll just explain its position on the list. We all know it's gameplay is just not there with the rest of the package. I barely have in me to care about good first person shooters anymore so that really dragged it down for me. That ending song might have left just that bad of a taste in my mouth to knock it down a couple entries. I don't see this game as sticking with me for a long time but given how things are heading that is very hopeful. Or at least I anticipate Wolfenstein III will totally usurp this one when it comes out.

7. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

I love Kingdom Hearts for reasons that have evolved over the years. This one plays on the fact that I love that Tetsuya Nomura has ripped of MGS and then out Metal Geared Nojima by way of Star Wars with the Final Fantasy and Disney IP. Kingdom Heart in a lot of ways follows the same plot trajectory that MGS does. The story of the first Kingdom Hearts is not too far off from the Disney tales the game whisks player through just with a little Nomura filter on it. KHII start's off by having you play a blonde character instead of the old man character in a virtual reality simulation that starts to break down. Then it takes you back to the main character than it introduces all sort of shit that doesn't make any sense but unlike MGS2 is actually resolves itself. So what Kingdom Hearts done in the like 6 other games post KHII is basically go back an in a very Kojima way try to write and retconn his way into explaining everything that doesn't make sense from the first 3 games while simultaneously adding a whole bunch of stuff for KHIII to eventually resolve.

So we get to Birth by Sleep which is the one entry I skipped out on and Finally played when it was released earlier this year on PS4. Birth by Sleep is MGS3 of the series. It is the prequel to the first Kingdom Hearts featuring a new cast with some of them with familiar faces. The gimmick here is that the game features three protagonists that you can play through the story as forming a Rashomon plot where you get the story from each character perspective. It ultimately ends up being the best story by far in the series. Some of that has to do with how dark it ultimately gets as all of these characters story each end their own unique tragedies to explain why they aren't around in the first game. This game surprisingly gets the most plot mileage from the Disney connection than any other entry in the series. Two of the main playable characters are flawed in a way the Sora the usual protagonist is not. So they end up actually learning lessons from the Disney worlds they encounter. Terra, the one flirting with the dark side of the force, ends up spending a good chunk of time working with and for the Disney villains but then also interacts with uplifting Disney character when he needs dragged back from the edge. The pure juxtaposition of the dark tone of the story and the light hearted Disney worlds is great. This game is probably the selling of the concept of Kingdom Hearts.

The main problem with the game is that it's gameplay let's it down. Birth by Sleep is the best playing of handheld entries to be sure but it is a massive step back from the console entries. Birth by Sleep pushes the trend that KHII started of being flasher for the sake of making the characters seems like they are stronger than before but sacrificing the good character action feel and balance that made Kingdom Hearts like the next best thing since DMC3 and DMC4.

6. Kingdom Hearts HD II.8: Final Chapter Prologue/Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep-A Fragmentary Passage

I am only talking about KH 0.2 in this entry which is the new game released in this package that functions as the Ground Zeroes of Kingdom Hearts III. As the name suggests it is a follow up of Birth by Sleep from the previous entry. It follows the exploits of Aqua who was left trapped in the KH universe's equivalent of hell at the end of that game. The game is not that long or substantial it luckily focuses on Aqua who is the best character in the series. The main attraction here is combat which they seem to have learned just how scale back in such a way that it can still be flashy but actually still has that good feel of KH I and II. It made me look forward to how KHIII will play instead of seeing how good of a MGS4 it pulls trying to tie up this ridiculous series.

5. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

I have a complicated history with Bandai Namco. Mainly there is a whole era of games they have made that I have desperately wanted but they would not give an English release. This title marked when they turned a new leaf finally started to giving the West those titles including Gundam Versus earlier on this list and another entry later on this list. I bought this one to reward them and I turned out to be pleasantly surprised.

I need to start out by saying that I am a massive Digimon fan more so than Pokemon and I caught them all in 4 soon to be 5 out of 7 generations of Pokemon. I feel that the Digimon franchise has entries that completely outclass Pokemon in each category anime, movies, manga(actually that the closest call), and yes games which we will get into later on this list.

To get into my feelings on this game I need to talk about how I love the anime entries in this series. Digimon Adventure and it's sequel Adventure 02 feature some of the best character and relationship writing I have ever seen in fiction. Director Mamoru Hosoda would basically rehash his Digimon movie Our War Game! as Summer Wars in 2009 that did well enough critically to get him that 'next Miyazaki' rub. The third anime Digimon Tamer's had the writer of Serial Experiments Lain, Chaiki J. Konaka, basically Trojan horse children into watching Neon Genesis Evangelion.

So why did I bring all that up. Well because my thoughts on Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth was that it was basically a good season of Digimon anime which is very high praise. It's maybe not as good as anything mentioned above but it is quite good. The plot shared some similarities with this year's Persona 5. A teen in Toyko under the care of an unorthodox caretaker. In stead of becoming a supernatural thief you become a supernatural private eye. You use digimon instead of persona. It taps into some of the greater Digimon lore which is deep and doesn't actually surface that much. The game has got some great style to it as well. They employ a real trippy as visual effect towards the end that was jaw dropping.

Gameplay is fairly standard turn based JRPG it features a two different weakness cycles you have the standard elemental wheel and the digimon type wheel of Vaccine, Virus, and Data. There plenty of digimon to get and the evolution system and level cap system are enough to always keep you team comp cycling and moving. It means that the game seemly always keeps a carrot just out of reach and it managed to keep my attention for the length of game. It is overall a very solid JRPG if you like those and I do.

4. Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

Final Fantasy XIV is a hell of a game. I have been playing it since launch and it is the only MMO of the many MMOs have played that has stuck this hard. I won't get too far into what makes it a great mmo in this entry instead I will be talking about it as a Final Fantasy game. Because man talk about total Final Fantasy whiplash of playing both this and XV in the same year.

The thing about XIV is that the dev teams actually gets the FF series in a way that none of the FF dev teams has since FFX. They truly nailed that essence of Final Fantasy since they launched A Realm Reborn that has been missing from X. As a previously mentioned waaaay back I love XIII but it just doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy even to me. A Realm Reborn recaptured that magic but it felt much like you as a player where getting dragged through Final Fantasy theme park. Heavenward brought a story that felt like SNES era Final Fantasy as you were part of a ragtag band on a quest to talk to a dragon and hopefully end a centuries long war.

With Stormblood it really feels like FFXIV has truly hits it's stride and the story it tells for the first time does not lean on the Final Fantasy of the past but stands on it's own while still feeling like a Final Fantasy story being the first in nearly 16 years. The story revolves around liberating two occupied states from the evil Final Fantasy empire which is certainly familiar. Surprisingly the story manages to actually make the empire threatening. This is surprising because while up to this point in the story they have been a constant threat, the warrior of light that you play is at this point kills world threatening gods casually. They manage to do this all with ever pulling the old this great evil entity was behind it all along. In the end the enemy remains human in a way that never happens in a Final Fantasy which is refreshing.

Other things of note is that over the years and with in this expansion they have built out a cast of characters that rivals the very best of the series. The art team is also killing it in this expansion especially in the environmental design work. The engine is starting to get old but the sights wowed me in a way that much more technically advanced FFXV did not. It makes it hard to believe the same company made both there is just so much more life to XIV. Stormblood does cheat a bit by featuring an Eastern theme which as FFX has showed Square does amazing work when they are given the rare chance to do Eastern themed work. The hardest working music man in games, Masayoshi Soken, managed to knock this soundtrack out of the park it is every bit as strong as the next to entries in two entries in this list. He produces all this music at a ridiculous pace and under a ludicrous schedule. His work might not be the most polished but he is starting to give Uematsu a run for his money as a Final Fantasy composer.

3. Persona 5

I liked Persona 5 as much as I liked Persona 3 and Persona 4 which is a lot. Persona 5 is basically the advancement of the direction Persona 4 went in evolving Persona 3. They took the idea of making the social links more important that Persona 4 did by making it so you social linked with your entire team and gained abilities for doing so. It expanded this out to the entire social link cast. Which definitely had benefits making it feel like you were getting a lot from every social link but it brought in some issues. Like the non party member social links in general gave you way better benefits than your party members did. Also the non party member social link usually had better stories to them than the party members. Both of these combine to make make me not appreciate the Phantom Thieves quite as much as I did SEES and the Investigation Team before them.

Another thing Persona 5 does is put just about all of it's focus into Phantom Thieving aspect of the story making you lose almost all of the semblance of Japanese school simulator aspect of Persona 3 and 4. This brought benefits in that the Phantom thieves story is more interesting and focused than the SEES one and Investigation team one but again something was lost. I feel like you never really get to know Persona 5's Tokyo in the way you got to know Persona 3's Port Town and Persona 4's Inaba. It mainly coasts on your familiarity with Tokyo from elsewhere. All of the social links revolve around the Phantom Thieves so they don't flesh out the setting. The high school in Persona 5 is almost entirely a non entity.

A lot of Persona 5 made me appreciate design decisions that were made in Persona 3 more in contrast to itself. Persona 3 choice to limit how much you social link with the members of SEES immediately meant there was a larger cast for you to interact with and expanding the scope of its world a bit more. It also staunchly enforce a separation between your school life and your SEES job in way I can appreciate since the school life is so lacking in 5. A lot of the design shift occurred in Persona 4 but was not quite as noticeable because it fit with Persona 4's small town setting making sense that there was a smaller more intimate cast and a smaller place to explore. So the issue this brought became ore noticeable in 5 as it steered towards those decisions. All in all those I really enjoyed this one. They all have there strengths and weaknesses and I don't think I can claim any Persona as better than the rest.

2. NieR:Automata

I don't need to go into too much detail about what makes NieR: Automata so great that has been done before elsewhere. So I broke down an bought this game during the wait between the final entry on this list and Persona 5 to come out. It was still within about the first month of release. I was fairly convinced that I was not going to like the game at all due to being turned off of the gameplay. I am very picky about my character action which DMC3 and DMC4 are my top favorite and I enjoy KH I and II for how they manage to RPG it and feature the best boss battles in gaming. Bayonetta was above my cut off but not by a lot because I felt that the Witch Time mechanic was a little too much of a baby mechanic for babies.

So you can imagine my surprise when I didn't actually hate it. Initially the novelty of the way the games shifts it way through so many gameplay modes seemly was interesting enough of a gimmick. Eventually down the road especially playing the dlc unlike I would guess most people I really started to dig into the sepths of the system it's about Bayonetta level for me. Then the game got it's claws into me. First I had to stop an make sure the music wasn't done by Yuki Kajiura, famously for me the composer of .hack//Sign. That is about as high praise as you can get from me other than mistaking your music for Yoko Kanno's work. Next made a small notice of how the character designs not too dissimilar from Harry Ord from Turn A Gundam who is my avatar on this site. Then on I could not help making more comparisons to Turn A Gundam which is my favorite Gundam. Both are deep deep future tales, have silver hair coming form space with advanced technology, a lot of similar themes about war, and incredible soundtracks with Turn A actually being done by Yoko Kanno. I guess what I'm getting at here is if you like NieR: Automata you should maybe check out some Gundam.

1. Digimon World: Next Order

It has been long held little known fact that Digimon World is in fact the greatest video game ever made. This is due to the fact that it featured the greatest gameplay loop. It took a page out ActRaiser and the later Dark Cloud handbook in that is combines city building with an rpg system. What differentiates Digimon World is that it's RPG system goes back to the Digimon's roots as a virtual pet.

This means you have to feed, train, take to the rest room, watch you don't tire, and cure the sickness of your Digimon. This also means eventually your Digimon will die and you'll have to start over raising a new one put you a a strict timetable in which you must juggle all of this. The core idea of this game is that you need to leave the city to explore the world and find and recruit Digimon which back to the city which will build various improvements.

The push and pull here is that it hard to train and take care of your digimon away from the city but the improvements you make to the city make it easier for you to take care of your digimon even out in the field. Balancing act you are playing is that you want to spend enough time training your digimon in the city which is the fastest way to get them stronger but leave with enough life span that you can recruit as many Digimon as possible as well fight fights to get the funds to up keep your digimon. Then when your digimon passes you use the improvements to make a stronger digimon so you can get further and recruit more and repeat. It all feeds together in a way that is so satisfying that no gameplay loop since has ever been as good.

There was an attempt to recapture the magic of this game back in 2012 with Digimon World Re: Digitize which featured the same gamplay loop. I mentioned back in the other Digimon entry this was on of those Bandai Namco games that I desperately wanted but they did not release in the west. I eventually did play it when a fan translation was released. While they had the same great loop they definitely missed the mark. The problem was that they had tuned the game to be too easy. If you did know of Digimon World you would remember that it was know for being notoriously difficult especially as it required a lot of esoteric knowledge that the game never game you to fully understand it. Which was reason why that game's gamefaqs forum was still active well into the late 00's in not the 10's. So it made sense why they went easier with Re: Digitize. The problem it caused was that is was that you could make way too much progress per digimon life cycle. You almost never really felt all that rewarded for building up your city since you very rarely ran in to a gate where your digimon wasn't strong enough. Plus you were able to collect more improvements than you could actually notice the value of each individual one.

And so we get to Next Order and after waiting 18 years for a true follow up to many favorite videogame. It arrived and they actually managed to nail it and it actually got a western release. They got the difficulty right this time. They made some new additions to the formula. You've got the mega stage, you have two digimon at a time, there another system to improve the city not solely through recruitment, and they actually surface evolution information in the game this time. The game's story is actually insanely enough a direct follow up to the original Digimon World's story. The protagonist of that game shows back up in this game. Also HOLY HELL the opening to this game was insane to me. It opens with this killer remix of the original game's final boss theme which was the most hype like 20 second loop in gaming. At that moment playing this game for me was to know what it must be like to be Dan Ryckert and have the universe bend to my will to create a great follow up to my favorite game ever and have it actually get released in the west. I don't like this game as much as I like the original that I dissected for almost two decades but it is really close.

Sorry NieR: Automata you were completely robbed. Any other year would have been your year.