2023 Video Games
Numerically, it looks like I only finished one fewer game than I did in 2022, but there were a lot more shorter games and the inclusion of some DLC in the list. The year was consumed with reading, plus the renewed playing of WoW took some time as well (though not nearly as much as one might think given how I used to play). There are some things I dabbled in that aren't mentioned because I played them for not very long, either as a demo or to fulfill missions for various services, and I wasn't interested in them enough to even note them down, but for the most part the list is as follows:
Finished:
1. Star Fox (r)-This was the game to play this month for Nintendo Switch Online rewards. Normally I just load the game and then move on with my life but I decided I'd just go ahead and see how bad I was at Star Fox these days, since I hadn't touched it in over 20 years. I then proceeded to get to the last level on my very first life. Amazing how much I remembered. It was the easiest path, true, but I couldn't believe how well I was doing. So I went ahead and created a suspend point just in case. That was a good choice, as the last level I did not remember. I did have to use the suspend point (technically twice, as I screwed up so quickly after the first use I just restarted again after about a minute), but I beat Andross. Amazing how short the game was, really, but I guess when it's about memorizing levels, it took longer than the hour it took me because of the initial learning. It's not the kind of thing I'd play these days, but I'll always remember it fondly as the first game that both my dad and I played but I beat first. I stayed up until about 4 am one Friday night at his house in Brigham City playing until I beat it. Not sure why I latched onto beating it that night or why he let me stay up that late at 14/15ish, but there it is.
2. Dragon Quest Treasures-This was my main Christmas present from the family. The reviews I was seeing were very mixed, with people either seeming to love it or hate it, so I was a bit unsure before I put it on my wishlist. I kept seeing people in the Dragon Quest subreddit love it, though, so I thought there was a good chance I would too. I'm very glad I asked for it because I have enjoyed it. It's very cute. Hard to describe, kind of a mix of Dragon Quest Monsters, Monster Sanctuary, and something else. You recruit monsters with different abilities to traverse the world and use them to seek out treasures and bring them back. The treasures include all kinds of iconic items from the main series as well as statues of notable characters and monsters. It claims to be a backstory for Erik and his sister Mia from DQXI, but I'd also have to say it's non-canon. It really doesn't fit with what was explained of their backstory in XI. Combat is a simple action game where you can stab with your dagger, shoot different ammo with a slingshot, dodge, and utilize a special ability either from yourself or one of your three party monsters. That's the only real control you have of them, they otherwise are doing their own thing. I really don't remember anything about Rocket Slime except enjoying it and I think that's going to be my takeaway from this DQ spinoff as well. Warm feelings from having enjoyed it, but ultimately it's not something that's likely to stick with me. Makes me want to go play other DQ games again, though!
3. Portal (r)-This was for TGI game club. It was fun to blast through it again, but a second play through doesn't have the same zing. Even though going in the first time I already knew GLaDos was bad, there was still a thrill of discovery of finding the hidden paintings talking about the cake and how to escape and the like. Alas, even this many years later, that thrill does not return a second time since I remembered they existed. I had forgotten how long the escape was after the last test chamber and before finding GLaDos's chamber. It was a bit too long in my opinion. At any rate, I was glad to do it, as it meant my push for Portal 2 as a game was successful. I'm finally going to play it thanks to game club. I'm a little surprised how influential I've managed to be in our picks since joining. I wasn't the one that brought up Portal 2 originally, but I was the one who brought it up post-God of War as our next pick and was able to successfully convince people since it was short. Said shortness was why we added Portal to the mix because why not.
4. Picross S8-More Picross. I finished. It's fun. Sometimes I want the quick dopamine hits from finishing puzzles.
5. Portal 2-Another TGI Game Club game. I'd never played it despite having it for many years. I am very, very bad at the kind of puzzles the Portal games have. I had much more delight in GLaDos's dialogue than I did in the gameplay. I'd heard the end song, "Now I Only Want You Gone" many times, but it was nice to get additional context for it. It also gave me some additional context for the end of Aperture Desk Job from last year, because I'd been very confused by the Cave Johnson stuff at the end.
6. Soul Hackers 2-I'm coming to the conclusion that the spin-offs of Shin Megami Tensei are better than the mainline games. I'm genuinely bewildered by the middling reviews this got. It was fantastic. The story and characters were terrific. The battle system was fun without the negative consequences of hitting a strength that comes with the press-turn system. The environments were far more varied than seen in SMT V. I loved it and I hope it has a long tail on sales so we can get more.
7. Picross S Genesis and Master System-I recognized very little in this game, but it's Picross. The fun is solving the puzzles, not whatever the objects actually are.
8. Fire Emblem: Engage-I'd been planning to get this, but later, as I haven't played Three Houses yet despite having had it for years. I loved Fates so much last year and people were so excited about it in the TGI discord channel, however, I decided to get it right away. Then I got into Soul Hackers 2 a matter of days before this came out and I was lost to that instead of playing Engage immediately. And then I played Engage and it was...meh. The characters were meh, with a total Mary Sue protagonist that bugged me in ways they usually don't, most of the other characters were one or two note wonders, and the story was staid and mostly very predictable and full of holes. The difficulty was off as well, with the casual being way, way too easy, but the hard being enough harder to require a lot of grinding but with no good way to do so in the way Fates had. There were skirmishes to take on between battles, but the mobs quickly vastly outleveled yours. I ended up doing a ton of grinding just going as far as I could, having my whole party die, and then starting the battle over again while retaining the experience I'd gained in the previous go. Then, on top of all of that and what really drove me around the bend, there were so many stupid little chores to do in between battles it drove me insane. I actually found myself actively choosing to do things like play Spider Solitaire over finishing this game because of all the flaws adding up. I really hoped I'd like it, especially since there was a dude in the TGI discord who loved it who also loved Fates, but this was not a good second impression of the FE series for me.
9. Fire Emblem: Engage Fell Xenologue-The story DLC the came out for Fire Emblem: Engage. The nice thing is I dragged my feet on the game so much and the DLC came out so fast, I went from finishing the game straight into playing this. It was an alternate reality type situation where most of the bad guys, particularly the dragons, from the main story had color swapped good counterparts in this world. It was cool to get a chance to use them in your own party, but the difficulty was set at absurd difficulty on hard and I was tired of the game, so I just cranked the difficulty down to easy and cake walked through it.
10. Panzer Dragoon-After dragging out Fire Emblem: Engage over months, I felt like I needed something short as a palate cleanser. Back as a kid when the Sega Saturn had come out, I'd play Panzer Dragoon at Toys R Us and thought it was really cool. Naturally, I've longed for Panzer Dragoon Saga after everything I've heard about it too (one of these days I'll need to emulate it. Even if I was inclined to buy a Saturn, which I'm not, I'm not buying a $1000+ game). When this was released as a remake/remaster/whatever, I picked it up on sale at some point but hadn't played it. Imagine my surprise when I found out how short it was, so I decided to go for it. I really haven't played a lot of rail shooters (and I don't think they really exist anymore), but I remember spending hours and hours on Star Fox, enough to the point where a lot of it is still in my memory nearly thirty years later, as shown earlier this year. This one is even more on rails than Star Fox. The remake is decently pretty, especially since I have a vague memory of how blocky and polygonal it was back in its original incarnation. I got to the boss of the third level on normal, then, with the pain I was in and the difficulty I was having, I knocked it down to easy. I think the main difference on easy is more health on the player and more lives given, but neither were key for me beating the game, because I discovered that there was a move I was missing-a homing missile. Suddenly the game became much, much easier with that. It also gave me less pain holding the A button down and sweeping the target reticule around on everything rather than spamming A constantly. I think if I'd discovered this earlier, I probably could have finished on normal, but I wasn't going to start over yet again. Finished the game. I think I paid about $15 for it, which is too much given the time spent, but eh. It allowed me to finally play and finish the game after decades of wishing I'd gotten to in the back of my head.
11. Kemono Friends Picross-More Picross. I have no idea what the IP is, but the pictures were all of cute furry girls. Kind of weird, but whatever. They weren't remotely titilating except for maybe one water one where the girl was wearing a swimsuit with a translucent cover up over it, so it was just normal happy furry weirdness, not twisted Japanese tentacle/child/whatever weirdness. Look, Jupiter hasn't released a new S-number Picross in a while. I'm reaching the dregs here.
12. Breath of the Wild-So I finally got through this. I had a save back in 2022 and then everything else was in December 2017, so I think what happened is that I was given a game by one of my friends for Christmas (I suspect Pokemon Let's Go Eevee) and I got derailed due to that and never went back other than to make sure the DLC applied when I bought it on sale. I still hate breaking weapons, but I handled things better this time around and never fully ran out in the midst of battle as I had happen initially. I'm not sure I was aware going in that breaking weapons was such a big deal as it had only been out for a relatively short time. Decent game. I don't think it is the best game of all time or the best Zelda game, though frankly, I very much doubt even those people who thought those things are going to retain those thoughts after what I've played of Tears of the Kingdom. Tears of the Kingdom takes many of the things in the game and makes them so much better (including the damn weapons breaking). I'd put it at an 8/10. Good game, somewhat overhyped, but paved the way for an even better game.
13. Picross: Lord of the Nazarick-This was very, very confusing. There was a story and stuff? Memories of some dude who played an MMO and them somehow became a skeleton mage thing that took over a world. It was very confusing. I ended up trying to look up what the origin of this was and apparently there was some manga it was based on and maybe an anime. No actual games other than this one. After this, I just ended up skipping the story stuff because what actually was motivating me was doing the puzzles. I still have to finish up the Hello Kitty Picross on my 3DS and thankfully a new S9 has come out on the Switch, but I'm very afraid I'm going to run out of those two before a new game comes out. Such sadness, what will I do without my Picross fix?
14. Tears of the Kingdom-I understand to some extent why people were so crazy about BotW but TotK improves on it in literally every way. Being able to manipulate objects is far more extensive and logical (and leads to the building, even if I'm not building creative flaming penis mechs with it as apparently everyone on Twitter does), the ascend and recall abilities are a lot of fun and allow for breaking things in great ways, and best of all-there's a way repair weapons! I hate the breaking weapons so much and once I got to the Death Mountain region, I never had to deal with it unless I deliberately broke one when I knew I was about to pick up something better. Let rock octoroks suck up a breaking item and they spit it out good as new. Fantastic game. I just kept messing around in it and not actually achieving anything or progressing the game for the longest time. Last night I abruptly got bored with my aimless wandering, though, so I buckled down for the last bit and set myself up for going after Ganon today. Even the Ganondorf fight was so much better than Calamity Ganon in BotW! I hate that games have gone up in price (even though techically they cost less than they did when I was growing up, it's the principle of the thing, especially since they don't have to produce physical media at all mostly now!), but I have to say, the 160+ hours I put into TotK without coming close to finishing all that was present in the game proves that Nintendo's statement that the game was worth the hike to $70 is true. While I did rush through BotW (even still getting distracted, but doing things like using guides), I only put about 90 hours in. Fantastic game, though at this point, for someone who hasn't played BotW, I'd say just skip to TotK. A quick story recap would get you caught up on who the sages are and that Link was asleep for 100 years, which is pretty much the only stuff really unique story-wise in BotW. The rest was the basic reincarnation cycle, gotta stop Ganon business. That said, I think TotK breaks the so-called continuous timeline fans have tried to stuff all the Zelda games into. Just knowing Skyward Sword is supposed to be the first incarnation of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf doesn't fit with Zelda's thousands of years of sky surfing in TotK. Plus, you know, the Zonai. ETA-I've been told the Zonai were in Skyward Sword? Apparently I need to play it. But I also need a break from Zelda right now.
15. Cat Quest-I was looking for a shorter experience after 250+ hours of open world Zelda. Someone in the TGI Discord had played it recently and said it was cute. I'd bought it for the kids years back when I gave them the family Switch, so I gave it a go. It was indeed cute, short, and fun enough I jumped into the second too.
16. Cat Quest II-A third was announced at one of the not-E3 things in May or June and now I actually care because I enjoyed both of these.
17. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers-I jumped into this knowing it was very different from Soul Hackers 2, but having been so pumped by it that I had to try it. It is in fact very different, but I liked it a lot. I'm getting the feeling it's the spinoff SMT games I like best. It's an older game for sure (having originally released in 1997 on the Sega Saturn, then remade on the 3DS), but either Atlus fixed it up a lot for the re-release or it was just a well done game in the first place. I've now started the first Persona game, which came out just a year before, and it's sooooo clunky. I can see how younger people probably still wouldn't like Soul Hackers, because there are pain points like not being able to pick what your demon inherits when fusing and lots and lots of random battles, but the battles proceed quickly enough. Seeing some comments on it like a question as to why anyone thought Paradigm X, the VR world that was being pushed heavily in the game, was cool is definitely a sign of the times. It makes sense in the 1990's as seeming really cool and new and exciting, as all internet stuff did. In the 2020's, it just brings up thoughts of Mark Zuckerberg and all the abuse of personal data by social media companies and the like, so I get why younger people wouldn't really understand. You had to be there to go from not having the internet to having the world at your fingertips and how new everything was (and not so nearly heavily commercialized). All in all, not as good as SH2 or Strange Journey, but I enjoyed it other than the usual janky kind of Atlus crap at the end. I ended up bumping the difficulty down to easy for the last boss because there was a choice about 80% through the game that affected whether the boss was manageable or very hard. As I don't follow guides other than specific questions I might have, I naturally managed to pick the nearly impossible one. I could have done it, but it would have taken a ton of grinding and leveling up, as the boss was doing a move that one shot my caster/healer character with almighty damage, which can't be avoided or mitigated in any way. Basically I needed to get her leveled up enough to get enough health to not get one shot every time that move was done. I liked the game, but not enough to do that kind of grinding.
18. Sanrio Characters Picross-Yet another Picross game. Not much else to be said other than I hacked a 3DS and found out that there were additional Picross games released in Japan only that fans have translated. So more Picross before I run out! Sadly, two of them are very short (I'm mostly done with one already), but one of them is Picross e9, so a full sized 3DS Picross game. I'm genuinely baffled we didn't get it. There's not much translation/localization to be done with Picross! And most of it, the tutorials, could just be copied from the other games. I would have bought it if you'd made it available to me, Jupiter.
19. Club Nintendo Picross-There was a podcast series I just couldn't bear to wait to listen to, so I played a lot of picross over a few days. Plus this one wasn't very long.
20. Final Fantasy XVI-This is the first time I've bought a Final Fantasy game on release since...probably Final Fantasy IX. X broke me and XII completed the process and I've lost interest in the franchise in general since. I ended up buying XIII and XV over the years and Eric gave me the remake of XII, which I played a bit of, but the series jumped the shark over twenty years ago, XIV not withstanding. So the absolute crying and moaning and gnashing of teeth over the fact that XVI is an action game has been bemusing and, as it's continued without ceasing for months, very irritating. The game is an action game. I had to play on the lowest difficulty because it hurt my hands (I don't know why I was able to play God of War and Elden Ring without pain, but whatever). The story is all JRPG, though, and I greatly enjoyed it, even the side quests that people bitch and moan about. The pacing on the side quests was uneven and could have been cleaned up to make it feel better that way, I think, but I have no major complaints other than hand pain. I don't think I'll be able to complete the platinum (which requires a NG+ unlocked hard mode) because of that, but I'm poking at it in fifteen minute intervals until my hands hurt too much. I do believe Clive is the sexiest character in video game history for those attracted to men like myself. Soul Hackers 2 has yet to be dethroned for my favorite game this year, but this is a close second.
21. Club Nintendo Picross Plus-More translated and pirated picross.
22. Valkyrie Profile (r)-I got this when the PSP port came out on the PS4/PS5 to show Square Enix that this is the sort of thing people want, not the crappy Valkyrie Elysium crap they tried to foist on us, but I hadn't actually played in years. I wasn't sure I had any intention of playing it on the PS5, as the PSP port was inferior in some ways to the original US release as they based the game off the Japanese version instead of ours with additional QoL. But people in the TGI discord are constantly talking about trophies and platinums and when I looked at the requirements for VP, it was super easy. Most of it was literally just playing the game on hard, which is the way to go to get the A ending anyway. So I went for it. I had forgotten all the reasons I loved the game so much. I remembered the story, but I'd forgotten just how great the gameplay was. Such a unique game. It solidified my feelings on this being one of my favorite games of all time. I did, however, hate the new cutscenes, which now look very dated and gross compared to the pixel art. Additionally, losing things like item sorting and Lenneth keeping her abilities set when switching between swords and bows was a huge, huge pain. I think I'll go back to the PS1 version in the future even if it has worse resolution (they did appear to upres the port, though they also stretched the picture in some ways that was weird).
23. Cassette Beasts-An indie Pokemon clone. It was cute and good enough I stuck with it. Some of the others I've tried haven't been fun enough to stick with, like Nexomon, so the fact it was good enough to finish is notable. I didn't like it as much as Monster Sanctuary, but I did enjoy it.
24. Sea of Stars-The indie JRPG anticipated for years. It was kind of Chrono Trigger meets Super Mario RPG mixed with some modern quality of life improvements. I really enjoyed it, I just got caught up in a book reading frenzy in the middle which ended up having me get interrupted mostly for a few weeks. It also didn't help that when I was trying to get some guidance on getting the true ending, freaking IGN's guide spoiled a major plot point. I couldn't believe it. I'm still really mad about it. It's a Scarlet Pimpernel level of ruining things, though thankfully it didn't happen until I was nearly to the point instead of just starting (freaking Aaron Murray, I'm still mad at you for spoiling the book after a quarter of a century). Argh. It was actually something I'd anticipated happening, but then it didn't and some other stuff happened to make me think they actually weren't going the predictable route with it. So I'd have been shocked! I guess I can only hope that I'll manage to forget half the game like I did with Xenoblade Chronicles, but given the level of betrayal I feel, that's sadly unlikely. All that being said, I'd say it's my third favorite new to me game this year, behind Soul Hackers 2 and Final Fantasy XVI.
25. Pokemon Picross (r)-I went ahead and downloaded this on my hacked 3DS just because. Then I rediscovered how unplayable it is without paying and enabled some cheats so I didn't have to worry about that crap anymore. Definitely the way to play the free-to-play Picross type games, cheats are a must.
26. Pictlogica Final Fantasy-When I hacked my 3DS, I found this game under the translations. It was a free to start game with a mobile counterpart in Japan. I got about halfway through when the mechanics meant to make you buy got too annoying. It was to the point that unlocking a new section of the map and the associated puzzles would take /two weeks./ Talk about predatory. So I did some hunting and found an altered game file that made the game think stuff had been paid for to unlock it. Then I started over. Half the game is picross puzzles of Final Fantasy characters. The other half are battles where you fill out a 5x5 picross as quickly and accurately as possible to attack monsters with unlocked characters. It's an interesting concept, but while I finished all the regular picross puzzles, I gave up on trying to finish the last 70 or so missions with the battle part of things. There are English speakers who claim to have completed it fully, but I genuinely can't figure out a number of the battles and there are simply no resources in English (for obvious reasons). I tried looking at some pages people linked to using Google Translate, but it wasn't very helpful. So rather than just beat my head against a brick wall for full completion when the entire game hasn't even been translated and some of it is bad, so I don't know what everything does, I decided to be done. I did the part that I really wanted, which was the puzzles. Looking at my completed games list, it's obvious that I've been reading more than playing games lately, because this second half of the year is dire for completion of things.
27. Super Mario RPG (r)-The remake was coming out and I thought, "That's great for people who don't have access and want to play it. But I have it on the Wii U, I don't need to buy the remake." Then I volunteered to guest on the Gamer's Inn to fill in for one of the hosts while she was on maternity leave and the day I was scheduled for was right after the release of the remake. Ryan, the host who was not on leave, loves the game and was planning to instantly buy and play the remake. I hadn't actually played the game in over twenty years and didn't remember a whole lot, so I decided to use the opportunity to play it again so I could have an actual discussion with him about it. It's a fun, silly game, but I came to the conclusion...I should have bought the remake. A lot of rough edges got smoothed out and nice conveniences added. It's also gorgeous while still retaining the same character of the original game. Regardless, I played it again, it was fun, and I finally utilized the game that I got through one of Nintendo's rewards programs years back.
28. Eiyuden Chronicles Rising-I started this when it first came out last year, but got distracted by something shiny and never finished. I felt silly, because it's supposed to be a pretty short game, but I finally went back to it. I'm actually glad I waited to finish. This is close enough to the release of Eiyuden Chronicles I think I'm going to remember some of the world building lore. If I'd played it to completion in May 2022, there's no chance I'd remember anything about it by April 2024 when the main game releases. It's been such a long wait my excitement over the Eiyuden Chronicles had waned a lot, but now I'm excited again.
29. Fae Farm-I saw this when it came out and thought it looked cute, but the reviews were middling so I passed on it. Then it was a free trial on the Switch, so I gave it a go and found it fun and bought it. I suspect for the people super into farm sim type things, there's not enough to it, but it was great for my amount of interest and attention to this sort of thing. I was just starting to get tired of it when I rolled credits. There was tons more I could have done, but I had fun with what I did. My only real complaint is that there are different "job quests," but you can only take one at a time. It would have made much more sense if I could have had one quest from each of the job trainers instead of having to choose, "Oh, yes, I'm only going to work on this mining one and none of the combat I do in the dungeons where I'm mining is going to count," and so on.
30. Final Fantasy XVI Echoes of the Fallen DLC-When they announced shortly after the release that there'd be DLC for FFXVI, I wasn't too happy. I'm not normally a fan of the whole depressing, ambiguous ending thing, but this one worked for me. I really didn't want it messed with and I didn't see where the could go and leave it as is (especially because I'm of the opinion leaning towards there having been two major deaths at the end). This sidestepped that all very nicely by inserting itself in between all of the major plot points and the last boss encounter, at a point where you are otherwise wandering around and cleaning up sidequests and the like. They also had a good explanation for the presence of crystals that otherwise were not associated with those not already present in the game (and a similar explanation will likely be used for Leviathan in the next DLC). It was very nice going back to the game and it made me sad again that my hands can't handle the extra difficulty Final Fantasy mode. Just story mode was enough to make me ache. I don't know why the controls in this game are so hard for me, I tried a bunch of the different control schemes to no avail. Meanwhile, the next game, I was mostly fine with. Go figure.
31. God of War: Ragnarok Valhalla DLC-Another surprise Game Awards announcement was DLC for GoW: Ragnarok, and even better, it was free! This was another fun game to return to, especially since they basically took all the fantastic mechanics from Hades and just inserted them into GoW. Lots of fun and great story stuff that gives more insight into Kratos' actions in the pre-2018 games. I was so proud that I recognized one incident he mused on from the all of two hours I've played of the first game before giving it up. I keep being tempted to try again, but the interesting story beats are so few and far between in a game full of clunky controls and edgy content to appeal to teen boys getting away with something. I should probably just watch the lore video my friend Yeti has recommended to me multiple times and call it good.
32. Dragon Quest Monsters 3: The Dark Prince-The first DQM game to come out in the US for a very long time, especially since the last one that came out here I didn't even realize it because it was so poorly advertised. And that was back on the DS, so again, been a very long time. I'm really glad this came out and I'm glad I got it...but. There's a big giant but. The story is supposed to be something to do with being from the perspective of the bad guy from DQIV. The problem is the story is a hot mess, full of things that amke no sense even in context of this game, let alone in context of DQIV. The gameplay was a lot of fun, there was some fantastic quality of life stuff that I'm positive wasn't in older games, but man, the story was so very, very bad. It probably would have helped if they didn't go for the traditional silent protagonist they always do. Then maybe some of the story stuff would have made sense, because from the perspective of the player, there's big stuff that just comes out of nowhere. I was starting to work my way through trying to complete the pokedex, but as I followed certain instructions trying to get a specific monster, it wasn't working. That frustrated me, but then I found out there are Japanese exclusive monsters that could only be obtained through a McDonald's promotion over there. That was enough to make me tap out of even trying to complete it. All that being said, it's gotten me to want to play DQIV again, and I don't think I've played that since it came out on the DS back in 2006. I don't think I could recommend this to anyone that isn't a huge DQ or monster collecting fan, but I enjoyed it overall. All that being said, I sure hope they have a good solution in mind for DQXII's music. The long-time composer, Koichi Sugiyama, died in 2021. He was weird and controlling over the music (he was very reluctant to do things like have orchestrated versions, for some reason). He was also controversial for some other stuff I don't really know or care about. What I do care about is that if there have been more than maybe five new tracks in all the Dragon Quest games in the past twenty years, it'd be news to me. Them using the same exact music in every single game in the exact same way has gotten so incredibly old. It used to be a new game had different battle music. It used to be that a new area within a game would even have new battle music. There used to be new tracks for new worlds, different types of towns, different types of travel. And none of that has happened in so very long. I think DQVIII had a handful of new tracks and IX had a couple and that's been it. If there was anything new in XI, I couldn't tell, and the spinoffs definitely don't have new music. It's not just leitmotifs and callbacks to the main theme and the like. It's literally the exact same tracks. Like probably the exact same files used back in DQVII, since they're mostly not orchestrated (VIII somehow got an orchestrated soundtrack in the international release. I'm not sure how they managed to sneak that past Sugiyama). I'm replaying IV now and it's sad that the game feels more novel even though I've played it numerous times just because the music actually varies!
Played:
-Pokemon Unite-Was playing it with Bea, though she lost interest at the very end of the year. We're probably done with this now.
-Final Fantasy XIV-I didn't play much, primarily just doing the occasional holiday event.
-World of Warcraft: Dragonflight-I finally played enough to hit 70 months after the expansion launched. I've had a few moments where I've played a lot, but I'm mostly extremely casual in both hours played and activities done. I did manage to get through all the initial quests, but I'm struggling to finish all the quests from the patches so I can start on the content from the most recent patch. While I'm sure if I were playing like I used to, I would find the amount of content they've provided great, with how I play now, it's not so great. Eric stated it very well the other night when we were discussing it and he said, "It's one damn thing after another." Bea and I have started poking at Season of Discovery a bit in Classic. We'll see how far we get with that. It definitely makes her appreciate the QoL changes in the game. It's actually pretty funny to horrify her with the "back in my day" old person griping.
-Valheim-I continue to play this on occasion with Ben, Enoch, and Bea. In many ways, we're approaching a point where Ben says he'll want to play something else as the remaning content in Valheim is difficult and annoying to play through. But then he keeps having life kick him in the butt and being unable to have the leftover social energy to schedule things with us, so we haven't played a whole lot the last six months. So whether we actually move on to another game remains to be seen.
-Hi-Fi Rush-I'd heard good things about it. I loaded it up one day just to fulfill a Gamepass mission for points. It was so compelling even from the opening I ended up playing it up through the first boss. I do intend to go back at some point as I found it great, that time just hasn't happened yet. To have a game I had no intention of playing at all draw me in like that was impressive.
-Jedi: Fallen Order-This was a TGI game club game. I hated it and stopped playing it after the first couple of milestones. The navigation was just so awful and convoluted I couldn't bear it. The rest I probably could have soldiered through, but my lack of a sense of direction is already so bad that to just be circling endlessly, unable to figure out where I'm supposed to go and what I'm supposed to do and with no way to quick travel or whatever...it was just a big fat no.
-SMT Persona-I wanted to like this. I love Atlus games. Even when it came out, it was on that vague "I should get to it someday" list. The story was intriguing me. But holy crap, the combat is awful. Just so bad. Moves slower than a slug and has so many types of damage that actually being able to hit weaknesses is extremely difficult. I played a couple of hours of Persona 5 once, and to think that the snappy combat in that evolved from the horrible combat in this game is mind-boggling. As I noted in my Soul Hackers summary, it's close to the same age as that game, but the combat is so much worse. So it's not a matter of its age/era, they just made really bad choices with this game. Looking at walkthroughs, I was probably at least 60% of the way through, but other stuff seemed to be talking about needing characters to be a very high level for the end and I was in the 20's. The thought of that much grinding defeated me, especially when I already wasn't having fun. I keep considering going back and I may at some point, but at the time, I decided to cut my losses and move on to something else.
-Psychonauts 2-Another TGI game club game. I have no good reason for not completing this one. I was enjoying the game. 3D platformers don't seem to hurt my hands as often as 2D platformers do (I must tense up less?). I just didn't get around to doing the milestone one week, then as I got more behind I procrastinated finishing even more until it just ended up that I didn't finish the game. This is another I may go back to at some point.
-Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria-I jumped straight into this right after finishing VP, then got distracted by something shiny. Another "maybe I'll get back to this later." I don't think I ever completely finished it, so I'd like to do so. I vaguely remember trying to hurry up and finish before I gave birth to Bea, but I'm pretty sure I didn't quite make it and then was not in a position to game on home consoles, especially those with a corded controller, for years after.
My top eight for the year. I didn't feel strongly enough about a big bunch of games that were good, not great in my mind to sort out which two deserved to round the list out to ten.
1. Valkyrie Profile
2. Soul Hackers 2
3. Final Fantasy XVI
4. Tears of the Kingdom
5. Sea of Stars
6. Disgaea 7
7. God of War: Valhalla DLC
8. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers
Finished:
1. Star Fox (r)-This was the game to play this month for Nintendo Switch Online rewards. Normally I just load the game and then move on with my life but I decided I'd just go ahead and see how bad I was at Star Fox these days, since I hadn't touched it in over 20 years. I then proceeded to get to the last level on my very first life. Amazing how much I remembered. It was the easiest path, true, but I couldn't believe how well I was doing. So I went ahead and created a suspend point just in case. That was a good choice, as the last level I did not remember. I did have to use the suspend point (technically twice, as I screwed up so quickly after the first use I just restarted again after about a minute), but I beat Andross. Amazing how short the game was, really, but I guess when it's about memorizing levels, it took longer than the hour it took me because of the initial learning. It's not the kind of thing I'd play these days, but I'll always remember it fondly as the first game that both my dad and I played but I beat first. I stayed up until about 4 am one Friday night at his house in Brigham City playing until I beat it. Not sure why I latched onto beating it that night or why he let me stay up that late at 14/15ish, but there it is.
2. Dragon Quest Treasures-This was my main Christmas present from the family. The reviews I was seeing were very mixed, with people either seeming to love it or hate it, so I was a bit unsure before I put it on my wishlist. I kept seeing people in the Dragon Quest subreddit love it, though, so I thought there was a good chance I would too. I'm very glad I asked for it because I have enjoyed it. It's very cute. Hard to describe, kind of a mix of Dragon Quest Monsters, Monster Sanctuary, and something else. You recruit monsters with different abilities to traverse the world and use them to seek out treasures and bring them back. The treasures include all kinds of iconic items from the main series as well as statues of notable characters and monsters. It claims to be a backstory for Erik and his sister Mia from DQXI, but I'd also have to say it's non-canon. It really doesn't fit with what was explained of their backstory in XI. Combat is a simple action game where you can stab with your dagger, shoot different ammo with a slingshot, dodge, and utilize a special ability either from yourself or one of your three party monsters. That's the only real control you have of them, they otherwise are doing their own thing. I really don't remember anything about Rocket Slime except enjoying it and I think that's going to be my takeaway from this DQ spinoff as well. Warm feelings from having enjoyed it, but ultimately it's not something that's likely to stick with me. Makes me want to go play other DQ games again, though!
3. Portal (r)-This was for TGI game club. It was fun to blast through it again, but a second play through doesn't have the same zing. Even though going in the first time I already knew GLaDos was bad, there was still a thrill of discovery of finding the hidden paintings talking about the cake and how to escape and the like. Alas, even this many years later, that thrill does not return a second time since I remembered they existed. I had forgotten how long the escape was after the last test chamber and before finding GLaDos's chamber. It was a bit too long in my opinion. At any rate, I was glad to do it, as it meant my push for Portal 2 as a game was successful. I'm finally going to play it thanks to game club. I'm a little surprised how influential I've managed to be in our picks since joining. I wasn't the one that brought up Portal 2 originally, but I was the one who brought it up post-God of War as our next pick and was able to successfully convince people since it was short. Said shortness was why we added Portal to the mix because why not.
4. Picross S8-More Picross. I finished. It's fun. Sometimes I want the quick dopamine hits from finishing puzzles.
5. Portal 2-Another TGI Game Club game. I'd never played it despite having it for many years. I am very, very bad at the kind of puzzles the Portal games have. I had much more delight in GLaDos's dialogue than I did in the gameplay. I'd heard the end song, "Now I Only Want You Gone" many times, but it was nice to get additional context for it. It also gave me some additional context for the end of Aperture Desk Job from last year, because I'd been very confused by the Cave Johnson stuff at the end.
6. Soul Hackers 2-I'm coming to the conclusion that the spin-offs of Shin Megami Tensei are better than the mainline games. I'm genuinely bewildered by the middling reviews this got. It was fantastic. The story and characters were terrific. The battle system was fun without the negative consequences of hitting a strength that comes with the press-turn system. The environments were far more varied than seen in SMT V. I loved it and I hope it has a long tail on sales so we can get more.
7. Picross S Genesis and Master System-I recognized very little in this game, but it's Picross. The fun is solving the puzzles, not whatever the objects actually are.
8. Fire Emblem: Engage-I'd been planning to get this, but later, as I haven't played Three Houses yet despite having had it for years. I loved Fates so much last year and people were so excited about it in the TGI discord channel, however, I decided to get it right away. Then I got into Soul Hackers 2 a matter of days before this came out and I was lost to that instead of playing Engage immediately. And then I played Engage and it was...meh. The characters were meh, with a total Mary Sue protagonist that bugged me in ways they usually don't, most of the other characters were one or two note wonders, and the story was staid and mostly very predictable and full of holes. The difficulty was off as well, with the casual being way, way too easy, but the hard being enough harder to require a lot of grinding but with no good way to do so in the way Fates had. There were skirmishes to take on between battles, but the mobs quickly vastly outleveled yours. I ended up doing a ton of grinding just going as far as I could, having my whole party die, and then starting the battle over again while retaining the experience I'd gained in the previous go. Then, on top of all of that and what really drove me around the bend, there were so many stupid little chores to do in between battles it drove me insane. I actually found myself actively choosing to do things like play Spider Solitaire over finishing this game because of all the flaws adding up. I really hoped I'd like it, especially since there was a dude in the TGI discord who loved it who also loved Fates, but this was not a good second impression of the FE series for me.
9. Fire Emblem: Engage Fell Xenologue-The story DLC the came out for Fire Emblem: Engage. The nice thing is I dragged my feet on the game so much and the DLC came out so fast, I went from finishing the game straight into playing this. It was an alternate reality type situation where most of the bad guys, particularly the dragons, from the main story had color swapped good counterparts in this world. It was cool to get a chance to use them in your own party, but the difficulty was set at absurd difficulty on hard and I was tired of the game, so I just cranked the difficulty down to easy and cake walked through it.
10. Panzer Dragoon-After dragging out Fire Emblem: Engage over months, I felt like I needed something short as a palate cleanser. Back as a kid when the Sega Saturn had come out, I'd play Panzer Dragoon at Toys R Us and thought it was really cool. Naturally, I've longed for Panzer Dragoon Saga after everything I've heard about it too (one of these days I'll need to emulate it. Even if I was inclined to buy a Saturn, which I'm not, I'm not buying a $1000+ game). When this was released as a remake/remaster/whatever, I picked it up on sale at some point but hadn't played it. Imagine my surprise when I found out how short it was, so I decided to go for it. I really haven't played a lot of rail shooters (and I don't think they really exist anymore), but I remember spending hours and hours on Star Fox, enough to the point where a lot of it is still in my memory nearly thirty years later, as shown earlier this year. This one is even more on rails than Star Fox. The remake is decently pretty, especially since I have a vague memory of how blocky and polygonal it was back in its original incarnation. I got to the boss of the third level on normal, then, with the pain I was in and the difficulty I was having, I knocked it down to easy. I think the main difference on easy is more health on the player and more lives given, but neither were key for me beating the game, because I discovered that there was a move I was missing-a homing missile. Suddenly the game became much, much easier with that. It also gave me less pain holding the A button down and sweeping the target reticule around on everything rather than spamming A constantly. I think if I'd discovered this earlier, I probably could have finished on normal, but I wasn't going to start over yet again. Finished the game. I think I paid about $15 for it, which is too much given the time spent, but eh. It allowed me to finally play and finish the game after decades of wishing I'd gotten to in the back of my head.
11. Kemono Friends Picross-More Picross. I have no idea what the IP is, but the pictures were all of cute furry girls. Kind of weird, but whatever. They weren't remotely titilating except for maybe one water one where the girl was wearing a swimsuit with a translucent cover up over it, so it was just normal happy furry weirdness, not twisted Japanese tentacle/child/whatever weirdness. Look, Jupiter hasn't released a new S-number Picross in a while. I'm reaching the dregs here.
12. Breath of the Wild-So I finally got through this. I had a save back in 2022 and then everything else was in December 2017, so I think what happened is that I was given a game by one of my friends for Christmas (I suspect Pokemon Let's Go Eevee) and I got derailed due to that and never went back other than to make sure the DLC applied when I bought it on sale. I still hate breaking weapons, but I handled things better this time around and never fully ran out in the midst of battle as I had happen initially. I'm not sure I was aware going in that breaking weapons was such a big deal as it had only been out for a relatively short time. Decent game. I don't think it is the best game of all time or the best Zelda game, though frankly, I very much doubt even those people who thought those things are going to retain those thoughts after what I've played of Tears of the Kingdom. Tears of the Kingdom takes many of the things in the game and makes them so much better (including the damn weapons breaking). I'd put it at an 8/10. Good game, somewhat overhyped, but paved the way for an even better game.
13. Picross: Lord of the Nazarick-This was very, very confusing. There was a story and stuff? Memories of some dude who played an MMO and them somehow became a skeleton mage thing that took over a world. It was very confusing. I ended up trying to look up what the origin of this was and apparently there was some manga it was based on and maybe an anime. No actual games other than this one. After this, I just ended up skipping the story stuff because what actually was motivating me was doing the puzzles. I still have to finish up the Hello Kitty Picross on my 3DS and thankfully a new S9 has come out on the Switch, but I'm very afraid I'm going to run out of those two before a new game comes out. Such sadness, what will I do without my Picross fix?
14. Tears of the Kingdom-I understand to some extent why people were so crazy about BotW but TotK improves on it in literally every way. Being able to manipulate objects is far more extensive and logical (and leads to the building, even if I'm not building creative flaming penis mechs with it as apparently everyone on Twitter does), the ascend and recall abilities are a lot of fun and allow for breaking things in great ways, and best of all-there's a way repair weapons! I hate the breaking weapons so much and once I got to the Death Mountain region, I never had to deal with it unless I deliberately broke one when I knew I was about to pick up something better. Let rock octoroks suck up a breaking item and they spit it out good as new. Fantastic game. I just kept messing around in it and not actually achieving anything or progressing the game for the longest time. Last night I abruptly got bored with my aimless wandering, though, so I buckled down for the last bit and set myself up for going after Ganon today. Even the Ganondorf fight was so much better than Calamity Ganon in BotW! I hate that games have gone up in price (even though techically they cost less than they did when I was growing up, it's the principle of the thing, especially since they don't have to produce physical media at all mostly now!), but I have to say, the 160+ hours I put into TotK without coming close to finishing all that was present in the game proves that Nintendo's statement that the game was worth the hike to $70 is true. While I did rush through BotW (even still getting distracted, but doing things like using guides), I only put about 90 hours in. Fantastic game, though at this point, for someone who hasn't played BotW, I'd say just skip to TotK. A quick story recap would get you caught up on who the sages are and that Link was asleep for 100 years, which is pretty much the only stuff really unique story-wise in BotW. The rest was the basic reincarnation cycle, gotta stop Ganon business. That said, I think TotK breaks the so-called continuous timeline fans have tried to stuff all the Zelda games into. Just knowing Skyward Sword is supposed to be the first incarnation of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf doesn't fit with Zelda's thousands of years of sky surfing in TotK. Plus, you know, the Zonai. ETA-I've been told the Zonai were in Skyward Sword? Apparently I need to play it. But I also need a break from Zelda right now.
15. Cat Quest-I was looking for a shorter experience after 250+ hours of open world Zelda. Someone in the TGI Discord had played it recently and said it was cute. I'd bought it for the kids years back when I gave them the family Switch, so I gave it a go. It was indeed cute, short, and fun enough I jumped into the second too.
16. Cat Quest II-A third was announced at one of the not-E3 things in May or June and now I actually care because I enjoyed both of these.
17. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers-I jumped into this knowing it was very different from Soul Hackers 2, but having been so pumped by it that I had to try it. It is in fact very different, but I liked it a lot. I'm getting the feeling it's the spinoff SMT games I like best. It's an older game for sure (having originally released in 1997 on the Sega Saturn, then remade on the 3DS), but either Atlus fixed it up a lot for the re-release or it was just a well done game in the first place. I've now started the first Persona game, which came out just a year before, and it's sooooo clunky. I can see how younger people probably still wouldn't like Soul Hackers, because there are pain points like not being able to pick what your demon inherits when fusing and lots and lots of random battles, but the battles proceed quickly enough. Seeing some comments on it like a question as to why anyone thought Paradigm X, the VR world that was being pushed heavily in the game, was cool is definitely a sign of the times. It makes sense in the 1990's as seeming really cool and new and exciting, as all internet stuff did. In the 2020's, it just brings up thoughts of Mark Zuckerberg and all the abuse of personal data by social media companies and the like, so I get why younger people wouldn't really understand. You had to be there to go from not having the internet to having the world at your fingertips and how new everything was (and not so nearly heavily commercialized). All in all, not as good as SH2 or Strange Journey, but I enjoyed it other than the usual janky kind of Atlus crap at the end. I ended up bumping the difficulty down to easy for the last boss because there was a choice about 80% through the game that affected whether the boss was manageable or very hard. As I don't follow guides other than specific questions I might have, I naturally managed to pick the nearly impossible one. I could have done it, but it would have taken a ton of grinding and leveling up, as the boss was doing a move that one shot my caster/healer character with almighty damage, which can't be avoided or mitigated in any way. Basically I needed to get her leveled up enough to get enough health to not get one shot every time that move was done. I liked the game, but not enough to do that kind of grinding.
18. Sanrio Characters Picross-Yet another Picross game. Not much else to be said other than I hacked a 3DS and found out that there were additional Picross games released in Japan only that fans have translated. So more Picross before I run out! Sadly, two of them are very short (I'm mostly done with one already), but one of them is Picross e9, so a full sized 3DS Picross game. I'm genuinely baffled we didn't get it. There's not much translation/localization to be done with Picross! And most of it, the tutorials, could just be copied from the other games. I would have bought it if you'd made it available to me, Jupiter.
19. Club Nintendo Picross-There was a podcast series I just couldn't bear to wait to listen to, so I played a lot of picross over a few days. Plus this one wasn't very long.
20. Final Fantasy XVI-This is the first time I've bought a Final Fantasy game on release since...probably Final Fantasy IX. X broke me and XII completed the process and I've lost interest in the franchise in general since. I ended up buying XIII and XV over the years and Eric gave me the remake of XII, which I played a bit of, but the series jumped the shark over twenty years ago, XIV not withstanding. So the absolute crying and moaning and gnashing of teeth over the fact that XVI is an action game has been bemusing and, as it's continued without ceasing for months, very irritating. The game is an action game. I had to play on the lowest difficulty because it hurt my hands (I don't know why I was able to play God of War and Elden Ring without pain, but whatever). The story is all JRPG, though, and I greatly enjoyed it, even the side quests that people bitch and moan about. The pacing on the side quests was uneven and could have been cleaned up to make it feel better that way, I think, but I have no major complaints other than hand pain. I don't think I'll be able to complete the platinum (which requires a NG+ unlocked hard mode) because of that, but I'm poking at it in fifteen minute intervals until my hands hurt too much. I do believe Clive is the sexiest character in video game history for those attracted to men like myself. Soul Hackers 2 has yet to be dethroned for my favorite game this year, but this is a close second.
21. Club Nintendo Picross Plus-More translated and pirated picross.
22. Valkyrie Profile (r)-I got this when the PSP port came out on the PS4/PS5 to show Square Enix that this is the sort of thing people want, not the crappy Valkyrie Elysium crap they tried to foist on us, but I hadn't actually played in years. I wasn't sure I had any intention of playing it on the PS5, as the PSP port was inferior in some ways to the original US release as they based the game off the Japanese version instead of ours with additional QoL. But people in the TGI discord are constantly talking about trophies and platinums and when I looked at the requirements for VP, it was super easy. Most of it was literally just playing the game on hard, which is the way to go to get the A ending anyway. So I went for it. I had forgotten all the reasons I loved the game so much. I remembered the story, but I'd forgotten just how great the gameplay was. Such a unique game. It solidified my feelings on this being one of my favorite games of all time. I did, however, hate the new cutscenes, which now look very dated and gross compared to the pixel art. Additionally, losing things like item sorting and Lenneth keeping her abilities set when switching between swords and bows was a huge, huge pain. I think I'll go back to the PS1 version in the future even if it has worse resolution (they did appear to upres the port, though they also stretched the picture in some ways that was weird).
23. Cassette Beasts-An indie Pokemon clone. It was cute and good enough I stuck with it. Some of the others I've tried haven't been fun enough to stick with, like Nexomon, so the fact it was good enough to finish is notable. I didn't like it as much as Monster Sanctuary, but I did enjoy it.
24. Sea of Stars-The indie JRPG anticipated for years. It was kind of Chrono Trigger meets Super Mario RPG mixed with some modern quality of life improvements. I really enjoyed it, I just got caught up in a book reading frenzy in the middle which ended up having me get interrupted mostly for a few weeks. It also didn't help that when I was trying to get some guidance on getting the true ending, freaking IGN's guide spoiled a major plot point. I couldn't believe it. I'm still really mad about it. It's a Scarlet Pimpernel level of ruining things, though thankfully it didn't happen until I was nearly to the point instead of just starting (freaking Aaron Murray, I'm still mad at you for spoiling the book after a quarter of a century). Argh. It was actually something I'd anticipated happening, but then it didn't and some other stuff happened to make me think they actually weren't going the predictable route with it. So I'd have been shocked! I guess I can only hope that I'll manage to forget half the game like I did with Xenoblade Chronicles, but given the level of betrayal I feel, that's sadly unlikely. All that being said, I'd say it's my third favorite new to me game this year, behind Soul Hackers 2 and Final Fantasy XVI.
25. Pokemon Picross (r)-I went ahead and downloaded this on my hacked 3DS just because. Then I rediscovered how unplayable it is without paying and enabled some cheats so I didn't have to worry about that crap anymore. Definitely the way to play the free-to-play Picross type games, cheats are a must.
26. Pictlogica Final Fantasy-When I hacked my 3DS, I found this game under the translations. It was a free to start game with a mobile counterpart in Japan. I got about halfway through when the mechanics meant to make you buy got too annoying. It was to the point that unlocking a new section of the map and the associated puzzles would take /two weeks./ Talk about predatory. So I did some hunting and found an altered game file that made the game think stuff had been paid for to unlock it. Then I started over. Half the game is picross puzzles of Final Fantasy characters. The other half are battles where you fill out a 5x5 picross as quickly and accurately as possible to attack monsters with unlocked characters. It's an interesting concept, but while I finished all the regular picross puzzles, I gave up on trying to finish the last 70 or so missions with the battle part of things. There are English speakers who claim to have completed it fully, but I genuinely can't figure out a number of the battles and there are simply no resources in English (for obvious reasons). I tried looking at some pages people linked to using Google Translate, but it wasn't very helpful. So rather than just beat my head against a brick wall for full completion when the entire game hasn't even been translated and some of it is bad, so I don't know what everything does, I decided to be done. I did the part that I really wanted, which was the puzzles. Looking at my completed games list, it's obvious that I've been reading more than playing games lately, because this second half of the year is dire for completion of things.
27. Super Mario RPG (r)-The remake was coming out and I thought, "That's great for people who don't have access and want to play it. But I have it on the Wii U, I don't need to buy the remake." Then I volunteered to guest on the Gamer's Inn to fill in for one of the hosts while she was on maternity leave and the day I was scheduled for was right after the release of the remake. Ryan, the host who was not on leave, loves the game and was planning to instantly buy and play the remake. I hadn't actually played the game in over twenty years and didn't remember a whole lot, so I decided to use the opportunity to play it again so I could have an actual discussion with him about it. It's a fun, silly game, but I came to the conclusion...I should have bought the remake. A lot of rough edges got smoothed out and nice conveniences added. It's also gorgeous while still retaining the same character of the original game. Regardless, I played it again, it was fun, and I finally utilized the game that I got through one of Nintendo's rewards programs years back.
28. Eiyuden Chronicles Rising-I started this when it first came out last year, but got distracted by something shiny and never finished. I felt silly, because it's supposed to be a pretty short game, but I finally went back to it. I'm actually glad I waited to finish. This is close enough to the release of Eiyuden Chronicles I think I'm going to remember some of the world building lore. If I'd played it to completion in May 2022, there's no chance I'd remember anything about it by April 2024 when the main game releases. It's been such a long wait my excitement over the Eiyuden Chronicles had waned a lot, but now I'm excited again.
29. Fae Farm-I saw this when it came out and thought it looked cute, but the reviews were middling so I passed on it. Then it was a free trial on the Switch, so I gave it a go and found it fun and bought it. I suspect for the people super into farm sim type things, there's not enough to it, but it was great for my amount of interest and attention to this sort of thing. I was just starting to get tired of it when I rolled credits. There was tons more I could have done, but I had fun with what I did. My only real complaint is that there are different "job quests," but you can only take one at a time. It would have made much more sense if I could have had one quest from each of the job trainers instead of having to choose, "Oh, yes, I'm only going to work on this mining one and none of the combat I do in the dungeons where I'm mining is going to count," and so on.
30. Final Fantasy XVI Echoes of the Fallen DLC-When they announced shortly after the release that there'd be DLC for FFXVI, I wasn't too happy. I'm not normally a fan of the whole depressing, ambiguous ending thing, but this one worked for me. I really didn't want it messed with and I didn't see where the could go and leave it as is (especially because I'm of the opinion leaning towards there having been two major deaths at the end). This sidestepped that all very nicely by inserting itself in between all of the major plot points and the last boss encounter, at a point where you are otherwise wandering around and cleaning up sidequests and the like. They also had a good explanation for the presence of crystals that otherwise were not associated with those not already present in the game (and a similar explanation will likely be used for Leviathan in the next DLC). It was very nice going back to the game and it made me sad again that my hands can't handle the extra difficulty Final Fantasy mode. Just story mode was enough to make me ache. I don't know why the controls in this game are so hard for me, I tried a bunch of the different control schemes to no avail. Meanwhile, the next game, I was mostly fine with. Go figure.
31. God of War: Ragnarok Valhalla DLC-Another surprise Game Awards announcement was DLC for GoW: Ragnarok, and even better, it was free! This was another fun game to return to, especially since they basically took all the fantastic mechanics from Hades and just inserted them into GoW. Lots of fun and great story stuff that gives more insight into Kratos' actions in the pre-2018 games. I was so proud that I recognized one incident he mused on from the all of two hours I've played of the first game before giving it up. I keep being tempted to try again, but the interesting story beats are so few and far between in a game full of clunky controls and edgy content to appeal to teen boys getting away with something. I should probably just watch the lore video my friend Yeti has recommended to me multiple times and call it good.
32. Dragon Quest Monsters 3: The Dark Prince-The first DQM game to come out in the US for a very long time, especially since the last one that came out here I didn't even realize it because it was so poorly advertised. And that was back on the DS, so again, been a very long time. I'm really glad this came out and I'm glad I got it...but. There's a big giant but. The story is supposed to be something to do with being from the perspective of the bad guy from DQIV. The problem is the story is a hot mess, full of things that amke no sense even in context of this game, let alone in context of DQIV. The gameplay was a lot of fun, there was some fantastic quality of life stuff that I'm positive wasn't in older games, but man, the story was so very, very bad. It probably would have helped if they didn't go for the traditional silent protagonist they always do. Then maybe some of the story stuff would have made sense, because from the perspective of the player, there's big stuff that just comes out of nowhere. I was starting to work my way through trying to complete the pokedex, but as I followed certain instructions trying to get a specific monster, it wasn't working. That frustrated me, but then I found out there are Japanese exclusive monsters that could only be obtained through a McDonald's promotion over there. That was enough to make me tap out of even trying to complete it. All that being said, it's gotten me to want to play DQIV again, and I don't think I've played that since it came out on the DS back in 2006. I don't think I could recommend this to anyone that isn't a huge DQ or monster collecting fan, but I enjoyed it overall. All that being said, I sure hope they have a good solution in mind for DQXII's music. The long-time composer, Koichi Sugiyama, died in 2021. He was weird and controlling over the music (he was very reluctant to do things like have orchestrated versions, for some reason). He was also controversial for some other stuff I don't really know or care about. What I do care about is that if there have been more than maybe five new tracks in all the Dragon Quest games in the past twenty years, it'd be news to me. Them using the same exact music in every single game in the exact same way has gotten so incredibly old. It used to be a new game had different battle music. It used to be that a new area within a game would even have new battle music. There used to be new tracks for new worlds, different types of towns, different types of travel. And none of that has happened in so very long. I think DQVIII had a handful of new tracks and IX had a couple and that's been it. If there was anything new in XI, I couldn't tell, and the spinoffs definitely don't have new music. It's not just leitmotifs and callbacks to the main theme and the like. It's literally the exact same tracks. Like probably the exact same files used back in DQVII, since they're mostly not orchestrated (VIII somehow got an orchestrated soundtrack in the international release. I'm not sure how they managed to sneak that past Sugiyama). I'm replaying IV now and it's sad that the game feels more novel even though I've played it numerous times just because the music actually varies!
Played:
-Pokemon Unite-Was playing it with Bea, though she lost interest at the very end of the year. We're probably done with this now.
-Final Fantasy XIV-I didn't play much, primarily just doing the occasional holiday event.
-World of Warcraft: Dragonflight-I finally played enough to hit 70 months after the expansion launched. I've had a few moments where I've played a lot, but I'm mostly extremely casual in both hours played and activities done. I did manage to get through all the initial quests, but I'm struggling to finish all the quests from the patches so I can start on the content from the most recent patch. While I'm sure if I were playing like I used to, I would find the amount of content they've provided great, with how I play now, it's not so great. Eric stated it very well the other night when we were discussing it and he said, "It's one damn thing after another." Bea and I have started poking at Season of Discovery a bit in Classic. We'll see how far we get with that. It definitely makes her appreciate the QoL changes in the game. It's actually pretty funny to horrify her with the "back in my day" old person griping.
-Valheim-I continue to play this on occasion with Ben, Enoch, and Bea. In many ways, we're approaching a point where Ben says he'll want to play something else as the remaning content in Valheim is difficult and annoying to play through. But then he keeps having life kick him in the butt and being unable to have the leftover social energy to schedule things with us, so we haven't played a whole lot the last six months. So whether we actually move on to another game remains to be seen.
-Hi-Fi Rush-I'd heard good things about it. I loaded it up one day just to fulfill a Gamepass mission for points. It was so compelling even from the opening I ended up playing it up through the first boss. I do intend to go back at some point as I found it great, that time just hasn't happened yet. To have a game I had no intention of playing at all draw me in like that was impressive.
-Jedi: Fallen Order-This was a TGI game club game. I hated it and stopped playing it after the first couple of milestones. The navigation was just so awful and convoluted I couldn't bear it. The rest I probably could have soldiered through, but my lack of a sense of direction is already so bad that to just be circling endlessly, unable to figure out where I'm supposed to go and what I'm supposed to do and with no way to quick travel or whatever...it was just a big fat no.
-SMT Persona-I wanted to like this. I love Atlus games. Even when it came out, it was on that vague "I should get to it someday" list. The story was intriguing me. But holy crap, the combat is awful. Just so bad. Moves slower than a slug and has so many types of damage that actually being able to hit weaknesses is extremely difficult. I played a couple of hours of Persona 5 once, and to think that the snappy combat in that evolved from the horrible combat in this game is mind-boggling. As I noted in my Soul Hackers summary, it's close to the same age as that game, but the combat is so much worse. So it's not a matter of its age/era, they just made really bad choices with this game. Looking at walkthroughs, I was probably at least 60% of the way through, but other stuff seemed to be talking about needing characters to be a very high level for the end and I was in the 20's. The thought of that much grinding defeated me, especially when I already wasn't having fun. I keep considering going back and I may at some point, but at the time, I decided to cut my losses and move on to something else.
-Psychonauts 2-Another TGI game club game. I have no good reason for not completing this one. I was enjoying the game. 3D platformers don't seem to hurt my hands as often as 2D platformers do (I must tense up less?). I just didn't get around to doing the milestone one week, then as I got more behind I procrastinated finishing even more until it just ended up that I didn't finish the game. This is another I may go back to at some point.
-Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria-I jumped straight into this right after finishing VP, then got distracted by something shiny. Another "maybe I'll get back to this later." I don't think I ever completely finished it, so I'd like to do so. I vaguely remember trying to hurry up and finish before I gave birth to Bea, but I'm pretty sure I didn't quite make it and then was not in a position to game on home consoles, especially those with a corded controller, for years after.
My top eight for the year. I didn't feel strongly enough about a big bunch of games that were good, not great in my mind to sort out which two deserved to round the list out to ten.
1. Valkyrie Profile
2. Soul Hackers 2
3. Final Fantasy XVI
4. Tears of the Kingdom
5. Sea of Stars
6. Disgaea 7
7. God of War: Valhalla DLC
8. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers