I wanted to do a list.

I really did. But I realized that if I don't post something right this second, I will put it off until it's no longer relevant.

I had a busy holiday this year. This might have been my first holiday as an "adult" or whatever. I travelled a lot, did a lot of family stuff, and asked my parents to buy me winter clothes instead of video games. I have been in transit for literally the last 20 hours and there was absolutely no international travel involved, because snowstorms like to hit whenever I need to travel.

So yeah. That's why no list. I'm fucking exhausted. I'm surprised I even have the energy to write this extended intro to make excuses with. My brain is dead. I haven't even unpacked. I just sorted out the bare necessities and plan to figure out the rest tomorrow. But I wanted to post something. So here it is, my favorite game of 2016!

This game was a blast, and a surprising one, too. Over the years, I have been disappointed by crossover titles time and time again. They tend to lack the care and attention to detail that main series games normally receive. That might actually be true in Tokyo Mirage Sessions. In fact, yeah. The Fire Emblem characters have no personalities whatsoever. That's not ideal. But you know what?

They made an awesome game out of it, so it worked out okay. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a game oozing with style. Incredibly goofy and over-the-top style. And while maybe the story and characters stumble into typical anime/RPG tropes, this works to the game's advantage in a lot of ways. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a game that lets you enjoy the spectacle and doesn't ask you to do anything else. From a storytelling perspective, that is.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions has a battle system that can only be described as fucking rad. Were this a review, I'd go into the details of how it works mechanically, but this is just a gush-fest, so fucking rad is a serviceable descriptor. It kept me engaged with the combat constantly, even challenging me to ramp up the difficulty or deliberately challenge difficult enemies, just to see if I could pull it off.

Games don't do that to me. Like, ever. I am someone who likes to break games, either by overlevelling or finding a late-game weapon early, or something similar. I play most games on normal, but feel no shame knocking it down to easy when the going gets tough. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is the first game I wanted to play my first run through on "hard mode", like, ever. That is high praise.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions isn't an "achievement of gaming"or anything, but it's a damn fun RPG with a battle system that engaged me more than any turn-based combat has since Paper Mario. I'm happy to name it my game of the year.

# dat FE

I thought the battle system was fantastic, but the story and characters were so bubbly/sickly sweet/anime that it kinda made me want to vomit. And little things like having to go to Tiki every single time you wanted new weapons or skills was supremely annoying. There's no reason that couldn't have just been in a menu instead of having to take me all the way out of a dungeon. And it also sucks how near the end of the game, the game basically makes you go back to every single dungeon again. Even if you do unearth new sections of old dungeons, it still felt like unnecessary padding.

...All that being said, I really really really enjoyed the battle system. I had a ton of fun with the game.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions needed more love than it got. It's a really, really good game. It is extremely "bubbly" and happy and optimistic in that incredibly upbeat anime sort of way, but it does that really well and it never really got on my nerves. I enjoyed what I played of it a lot. Now I just need to play more of it.

I rather enjoyed Tokyo Mirage Sessions even if it didn't make my personal top 10 list. I think it started super strong, but had a rather weak middle section. Also, I love the battle system to death, but hated the fact you couldn't skip the insanely long battle animations. Even if you could speed them up, it was never enough for the amount of combat the game had IMO. Also, about half the side quests were really poorly designed and kind of a waste of time where you ended up back in dungeons you were way overleveled for.

It's still an easy game to recommend for Wii U owners, who really didn't get anything else worth playing last year.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person that didn't like this game. And I really thought I would! There are aspects of the battle system I like but it quickly felt way too repetitive for me, and the story and characters weren't good enough to power through. It feels like a poor man's Persona tbh.

@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.

It's diet Persona, and that's still a damn good thing.

I need to go back and finish it

TMS is your game of the year?

Word.

Hey it's my favorite game of the year too! None of my friends have played it and refuse to. Glad giantbomb duders are smarter than them!

Also my GOTY. If more people played it I think it would appear on a lot more lists.

@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.

While it isn't my own personal game of the year, it is definitely in my top 10, maybe even top 5. I really haven't given GOTY stuff much thought. Like others have mentioned, the battle system, art style and music really won me over. Some of my favourite battle themes maybe ever.

Edit - and that menu screen!

I adore it. I'm trying to settle on a final list, but it's top 3 material if not right at the top.

@veggiesbro:

Menu Screen of the Year

(And that counts for something, I think Galak-Z won Best Sttyyyyyllle the last year largely on the strength of it's pause menu)

@veggiesbro, @pierre42:

That menu really did look fantastic. Though Tiki looks like she is tripping balls there.

I also loved the effect that non-speaking NPC's had, the colored silhouettes thing. Some people thought it was lazy, but to my it was a great solution to an otherwise difficult to solve problem. The Wii U probably couldn't render a bunch of full-blown character models, at least not in that density, without dropping frames. On the flipside, an empty Tokyo would have been worse than a framerate drop. I thought the solution was elegant and only added to the game's atmosphere.

Man, I really want to play this game, but there's so much more on my backlog. (Especially after that steam sale) It'll probably become The last story for me; a game that I end up buying and intending to play, but never actually get around to it. The difference in this case though is I still have my wii u hooked up, and back then I had the ol' wii boxed up when the last story came in the mail. Regardless, the game looks cool as hell and it's nice to see so much positive word of mouth about it.