The Nesta & Z’s Games of The Year 2024 Edition
Hello friends, it’s that time once again. Where I spend entirely too much time and work putting together a list of my favorite games of the year. This list is a cooperative project that my wife, Z, and I put a lot of effort into. It makes sense to call it “our” list rather than just “my” list, because I played almost all of these games exclusively with her.
On a personal note this year was pretty rough for my wife and I too. But as has been the case for a while, we live day to day and accept or deal with the highs and lows that come our way.
“Big Tech” is still trying to shill “the power of AI” like some shitty dystopian future snake oil salesman. English voice actors are still in the middle of a strike because companies won’t respect their profession and talent enough to just agree not to steal their voice and run it through AI slop.
The ongoing industry layoffs, both in games development, publishing, and journalism continue to ravage an industry that still hasn’t recovered from the aftermath of the pandemic. Video games are as profitable as ever, but a lot of that money is going towards the suits at the top. And a majority of the playerbase out there are having a hard time moving on from their one or two on-going or live service games of choice.
There’s a lot of bad shit going on in the world that is far more serious than the health of the video games industry, but this isn’t really the place to get into any of that. And my country reelecting the world’s biggest orange dipshit certainly isn’t helping anything.
That’s a lot of negative energy to start this thing off with, so let me just say there were some really good things that happened this year. My wife found a community to call home in the Japanese Armored Core fandom, and has been on a rampage drawing and improving her art and linguistics. Bluesky happened, which as a result has actually put my voice in front of people again since I’ve been shadowbanned on Twitter for over a year. And most importantly I’ve just spent a lot of time having fun with my wife.
A large part of that is thanks to video games. Despite the numerous problems facing the industry, 2024 actually ended up being one hell of a year for games. I went into this year with some pretty massive expectations for some games. Some of which were met, while others not so much. But there were also a ton of surprises, and games coming out throughout the year that ensured I would always have… entirely too much to play.
But that’s not a bad problem, right? I love doing these lists every year because it’s an excuse to gush over the games I loved in any given year. And you can bet I have a lot to say this year.
I really like how my list format for last year went, so once again I’ll be handing out some awards — which are essentially just an excuse for me to praise certain aspects of my favorite games this year. Most of those awards will be at the end of the list, but I did want to start out with two games that I wanted to give special mention to.
So with all that out of the way, let’s get into the list!
The Pre-List Awards
Honorable Mention: Metaphor:Fantazio -
So as it turns out, sometimes having too much to play is a problem. The front and back half of this year were packed with games. As a result it was hard to find time for all of them. Metaphor is a special exception because this game is basically cursed for me.
My first copy of the game got lost in the mail, and I couldn’t get a replacement. So my next chance to get it was picking it up on PC at the end of October. Which already put me lightyears behind everyone else who had been playing the game.
As I mentioned before my wife and I were dealing with some stuff this year that got in the way of playing it as much as we’d like to. And all the while there were several other games I was trying to juggle.
So in the end, I just did not have enough time to play through Metaphor. For those who have already played the game, we only just got to Brilehaven the last time we played. And the fact that I still only have four party members should tell you I didn’t make it nearly far enough to justify putting it on this list.
However, if I had the chance to finish the game, this might have been a very different list. I adore this game. The combat is some of the best Atlus has ever done. And the wholly unique setting of this world has established a strong foothold for Atlus to make this the third pillar in the trifecta that previously only included Shin Megami Tensei and Persona.
The characters that I’ve met so far have been some of the strongest this year. With clear favorites like Hulkenberg who is one of the best to ever do it. The party so far in general has been banger after banger with Strohl and Heismay both being incredible. And Louis as the big bad is off to a great start for where I’m at in the game.
Atlus’s style is still unmatched, as the extremely pretty menus and character designs will attest to. But one of my only real complaints about this game is that it’s ugly. This game is a perfect example of the distinction between art style and graphical fidelity. I understand that Atlus started working on Metaphor many years ago now at this point. But it doesn’t change the fact that the game can look downright unappealing at times.
I can’t say how 2025 will end up when it comes to games to consider for GOTY. But I will give Metaphor its proper due when that time comes.
Best On-going Game: Honkai Star Rail -
Okay, I’m gonna be real with you. It was really hard not to put Honkai Star Rail on the actual list. And if I’m being honest I largely enjoyed my time with this game more than some of the other games on the list. The only reason I’m not putting it on here comes down to the fact that I have a solid 10 games that I really want to talk about. So instead of giving it a spot there, I’m more than happy to talk about it here.
In years past I’ve talked about how much I’ve enjoyed new Final Fantasy XIV expansions. Or Fire Emblem Heroes. While Fire Emblem Heroes continues to be my main gacha game that I take “seriously”, I sadly can’t fully weigh in on Dawntrail, the latest FFXIV expansion that was released this summer. Much like Metaphor, a bunch of issues got in the way of my wife and I being able to play as much FFXIV as we would have liked to this year. So we’re only halfway through the MSQ (despite having like 3 level 100 jobs each or something, lol).
I have a feeling that HSR would still clear it though, and that’s all thanks to Penacony, the new area that we spent most of our time in the 2.0 series of patches in this year. Honkai Star Rail put in a strong showing on last year’s list, but miHoYo has really gone above and beyond with the Penacony storyline and characters.
I realize that a new Hoyoverse game came out this year. But sadly despite being super hyped for it, Zenless Zone Zero didn’t live up to my expectations. And I find it impossible to go back to Genshin (right now at least). So that easily puts Honkai Star Rail in the #1 spot for me with their games. (Sorry, I haven’t really played Honkai Impact, or any other games from them.)
I won’t lie, I spend most of my time autobattling in HSR. Like many people do, I’m sure. But I actually like autobattle in turn-based RPGs. When it’s good enough / appropriate. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about the game’s combat. Far from it. I’ve spent a lot of time optimizing my characters and teams. Despite the fact that I don’t really partake in the games’ hardest content.
I really love how HSR allows for strong team building synergy. I know some people complain about powercreep, or might make some unfortunate choices when it comes to who to pull for. And I’m sure that stings the most when going up against the harder modes. But I still find a lot of enjoyment in building up different teams. Even if it’s just to have something different to farm with (My wife is beyond fed up with Firefly’s yelling combat dialogue for example, lmao.)
But those were already aspects of the game last year. So when I’m talking about why I think HSR is the best on-going game right now, it’s purely because of how oustranding the Penacony content was.
The concept of Penacony as a fancy resort world where you can enter a dream world and live out your fantasies is a great setting. And the cast of characters who were introduced this year and largely some of the best the game has to offer. (Not you Rappa).
Acheron makes an incredibly strong first impression and as you unravel the mystery of what’s really going on with her, she only becomes cooler and cooler. I also love the dynamic relationship between her and Black Swan, another character who I adore.
And if we’re gonna talk about relationships, The Blowjob Brothers themselves, Aventurine and Dr. Ratio basically steal the show whenever they’re on screen. And this is coming from someone who just did not find Dr. Ratio to be an interesting character at all until he was able to play off of his partner.
Boothill is another standout, as the half-robot space cowboy bounty hunter. Boothill has a very cool design, but it’s thanks to his quirk which allows him to constantly spew profanity due to the fact that it’s hilariously censored every time he swears. And there’s even a lore related justification for it, which is great!
All of them do an excellent job of playing their roles in the Penacony mystery, and this is without a doubt the most invested I’ve been in a gacha games story. And it’s not just that, I might even make the case for it being the best (new) story I’ve played this year.
miHoYo has always done a great job of making the really emotional and hype moments feel impactful, but I think they’re at their best when it comes to HSR. And I dunno, I just really, really love this game.
I do have a few issues though. For one the 2.6 storyline was absolutely atrocious to the point that I just started skipping through and speed reading everything. I’ve never done that with this game before. I’d love to tell you how I feel about the 2.7 story, but unfortunately the previously mentioned English voice actor strike has affected HSR as well.
I fully support the extremely talented voice actors who bring these characters to life, but hearing that parts of this patch’s story aren’t even voiced (just in English, the other languages have voice acting as usual) just makes me feel like waiting until they fix it.
I’m also getting extremely tired of the voice actor musical chairs miHoYo has been doing, and there’s always the fear that some of my favorite characters might be recast. Again, I can’t emphasize enough that I don’t blame the VOs for this, but something really has to be done about this AI shit.
Anyway, 3.0 is looking very promising so far, so I can’t wait to see what the next year has in store for Honkai Star Rail.
The List: Year of The Dragon Edition
Did you know it’s The Year of The Dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac? Yeah, well as it just so happens there were a lot of… dragon themed games this year. So I thought it would be fun to see how many games on my Top 10 list have dragons in them. Can you guess how many? Let’s find out!
10. Unicorn Overlord
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — Wyvern Knight
When we last left Vanillaware back in 2020, they released 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, one of the best games I’ve ever played and came out alongside some other all-timers in one of the strongest years we’ve ever had in gaming in my opinion.
Where 13 Sentinels was a wild sci-fi roller coaster ride, complete with aliens, time travelers, and of course giant robots.Unicorn Overlord is quite the opposite! It’s a high fantasy strategy game that has many similarities with the Ogre Battle series.
I had some pretty damn high expectations going into this game, and while I did walk away feeling like the game was a little longer than I would have liked (if you’re doing everything in the game, the amount of battles you have to do really starts to wear you down. And on top of that there’s a sharp difficulty spike in the last two areas of the game.) I still ended up on the other side of it thinking it was one of the ten best games this year.
If you’re familiar with Vanillaware then you probably already know what to expect when it comes to how this game looks. And if you’re thinking “Phenomenal” you’re absolutely right. Vanillaware’s character design is still among the greatest of all time, and each of the game’s main characters as well as the generic recruits you can have join your army all look incredible.
The game’s backgrounds and of course the food look as godly as you might have come to expect from this studio. And overall Unicorn Overlord is just a feast for the eyes.
The game’s story isn’t half bad either, if not the most original idea around. An ambitious general forms a coup against his own kingdom. As a result he murders the queen of the kingdom, while her personal guard escapes into the night with her son, Alain, alongside a mysterious ring. Now it’s up to Alain to form an army and lead the rebellion against the evil empire that forms in the wake of the coup, and liberate the five neighboring kingdoms of Fevrith.
Kinda sounds like Fire Emblem, huh? Still the game’s narrative manages to hold up, largely thanks to a large cast of charismatic characters who form the bulk of your army.There are even support conversations you can see between characters who spend enough time fighting (or eating) alongside each other.
The third pillar that makes up Unicorn Overlord is its fantastic strategic combat. I mentioned how this game shared a lot of similarities with Ogre Battle, and that’s mainly found in the combat. Your “units” are actually small squadrons made up of up to 5 characters each. When you deploy a unit into combat they move around in real time on the battlefield in a way that is not too dissimilar to an RTS, which Vanillaware has some experience with from their 2007 release GrimGrimoire.
You could spend many, many hours optimizing your characters and units since the game has so many different customization options in the form of skills on equipment. And a priority based system during combat that is basically just the Gambit system from Final Fantasy XII.
I obviously did a fair amount of this during my playthrough, but perhaps the reason I hit such a difficulty spike towards the later parts of the game is due to the fact that it all gets to be a little overwhelming at some point. Still, I managed to make a couple units who were my “Get Shit Done” teams, and that worked out well enough.
The battles themselves are up there with some of the best a tactical RPG like this has to offer, and some of the crazier maps can take close to an hour to complete. And these were largely the kinds of maps I liked the most, because of how involved they were compared to a lot of the side battles.
It seems like Unicorn Overlord proved to be a big hit for Vanillaware, but they’ve already commented on how there won’t be a sequel or DLC for the game. Which I’m fine with, I love every new experience Vanillaware cooks up (heh). Less cool is their refusal to port this game over to PC. But that’s another matter entirely.
9. Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — “Second Dragon”
Full disclosure, I haven’t actually finished Dragon Age: The Veilguard yet, but I’m right at the end of the game, so I’m going to go ahead and count it. Just couldn’t finish it in time due to scheduling conflicts.
Man, Dragon Age is one interesting series. None of the four games in the series are quite like the other. The first one was essentially another CRPG from the studio that put some of the best CRPGs out there. The second game is highly divisive with many people saying it’s the worst in the series, but there’s also a pretty vocal crowd that loves it (I’m one of them, it’s still my favorite in the series.) The third game, Inquisition is the most successful game in the series by far, selling incredibly well, and nabbing a bunch of game of the year awards at the time. I… wasn’t the biggest fan of it, lol.
So that brings us to a full 10 years later where against all odds Bioware finally put out another Dragon Age game. And wouldn’t you know, it’s quite divisive! (I really like it.)
After the disappointment that was, well, the last three games Bioware has made — alongside a pretty poor first showing of the game, I wasn’t all that jazzed about The Veilguard. But as it got closer to release, and we saw more of the game — that started to change.
It’s hard to describe why I enjoy this game so much. Not so far as it’s hard to think up things I like about the game. Far from it. But there’s just this… feeling I get from playing a game like this that I’ve been missing for what feels like a long time.
The Veilguard’s story is solid, especially for fans of the rest of the series. And while I wasn’t the biggest fan of Inquisition, I still found myself enjoying how this ties in so strongly to that game. There are plenty of cameos, references, and nods to stuff from the past, and that’s been a real treat.
Your party members for the most part are all endearing in that classic Bioware fashion. Some of the standouts being the necromancer Emmerich and his skeletal manservant Manfred. Taash who is an amazingly fun character, and really well written as a character who identifies as non-binary. Lucanis the assassin who is possessed by an amusing and very aggressive demon named Spite. And Davrin who I ended up choosing as my love interest in the game because I loved how my character and him bonded as fellow Grey Wardens.
The only exception, for me, being Bellara who I absolutely hate. I think her appearance is upsetting to look at (It’s like… the skin of her head is too tightly wrapped around her freakishly shaped skull? And she makes the most nauseating facial expression.) Her personality is very annoying, not to mention her voice. And I think her personal storyline sucks. But hey, can’t always be a winner, huh?
All of that is an impressive return to form for Bioware, but what I think I really appreciate about the game is its gameplay loop.
I think the game has the perfect ratio of story, combat, and exploration with some fun puzzles to solve. It just feels so comfortable for whatever reason. Like I haven’t gone on an adventure like this in years. I don’t think there’s an area in the game that I went to that I didn’t explore as much as I could during that visit.
And look, I am, if you know me — a “Soulslike” guy, I honestly feel like that style of game, when done well, is the pinnacle of combat in video games. I know that infuriates fans of character action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. And while I’ve certainly enjoyed those games, it’s strictly on a “Well, I’m going to do one playthrough to see the story on either the normal or easy difficulty setting. And that’s it.” basis.
But Dragon Age: The Veilguard has the kind of combat that I didn’t even know I missed so much. I think it was the 360/PS3 era where we got a bunch of games like this. More grounded combat that was still pretty approachable, but deeply satisfying. And that’s exactly how I feel about The Veilguard’s combat.
I spent a decent amount of time trying different builds for my Rook before I settled on the one that clicked the most. My main character is a Qunari Grey Warden Warrior named Denzel, and he carries a huge hammer and smacks the shit out of everything with it. I doubled down on Stagger passives, found a hammer that basically makes me immortal alongside all the other Deflect and Defense bonuses I have, and I’m wearing a piece of headgear that completely gets rid of the Warrior’s Rage meter in favor of a Cooldown based system. It fucking owns.
I dunno, at the end of the day Dragon Age: The Veilguard is just a really fun time. And this maybe, maybe gives me hope that they can also recapture the magic of Mass Effect… whenever that comes out.
8. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — Kazuma Kiryu & Ichiban Kasuga
Going into 2024, I had incredibly high expectations for two games. One of them ended up being a massive disappointment. The other one is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. A game that I liked a lot, but not as much as I’d hoped? I guess?
Let’s start with something LaD:IW got right in concept. It’s a dual protagonist story featuring both Ichiban and Kiryu. You even get to use them in the same party early on in the game, and then again in the post game. That’s pretty awesome.
Though I guess I already have to bring up one of my biggest complaints. While I feel like RGG has nailed the English voice casts that they’ve done with Yakuza 7&8, and the Judgment games, they’ve still never been able to do Kiryu justice.
It’s kind of hard, right? Takaya Kuroda is Kiryu, right? Just like Hidenari Ugaki is Majima. Now don’t get me wrong, the English VO for Majima is Matt Mercer, definitely one of my favorite English VAs. But… he’s just not Majima. Because he can’t be right? But it’s still passable if you’re playing Yakuza 7 & 8 in English.
Kiryu is another matter. For whatever reason beyond my comprehension when RGG needed an English voice for Kiryu in Yakuza 7 they had Darryl Kurylo revise his role… from Yakuza 1. Yes, Yakuza 1 which infamously has the worst English cast imaginable since they tried to go for “Star Power” and had actors come in who didn’t portray the characters properly at all.
It’s still… kinda okay though? Because Kiryu is only in Yakuza 7 for a little bit. However Kiryu is one of the main characters in LaD:IW, and while I appreciate that they knew they had to find a better voice actor. I would argue that they kind of… didn’t?
Is Yong Yea worse than Darryl Kurylo? No, probably not. But for a game that for all intents and purposes is wrapping up Kiryu’s story in the series (Unless….) this was just not the dude to do it. Again, it’s hard to think of anyone other than Kuroda in the role, but Yong Yea’s voice doesn’t fit..
So this created a real unique and frustrating problem. My wife and I wanted to play the game primarily in English because we love the English Yakuza 7 crew, and any new characters we’d be going in without any expectations.
We did NOT want any emotional Kiryu scenes ruined by Yong Yea’s jarring performance. So this resulted in us playing Ichiban’s chapters in English, with Yong Yea chiming in during random encounters, and unfortunately the party chats. And then when something important was about to happen, we’d quit out to the menu and change the language to Japanese to watch the scene (very tedious.)
Later on it got a bit easier when Kiryu and Ichiban split up into different parties. But towards the end of the game it becomes a nightmare.
Now all of that probably sounds dumb to you. Why not just play the game in Japanese? Because we had no attachment to the Japanese seiyuu for the Yakuza 7 crew. And at the end of all this, I kind of just hope that the original Yakuza crew of characters can finally just rest. If only for the fact that I don’t want to have to do this again, lol.
So just to round this out, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii comes out early next year. We’ll just be playing that in Japanese. I can’t say if any returning characters will be in that game or not. But we just gotta play through that with Hidenari Ugaki in the role.
And even though there wasn’t even an option to play Like a Dragon Gaiden in English when it launched, we would have just played that in Japanese as well. And I’d like to think that for the most part I can continue playing future RGG games in English. But if Kiryu or Majima return again in a major way, just don’t pair them up with the Yakuza 7 & 8 characters. Okay?
Does any of that make sense? No? Well sorry for wasting your time then.
I needed to bring that up though since it made playing this game a hassle. And even if that’s our own fault, that’s just how it went down for us. But let’s set all that aside and talk about the things Infinite Wealth gets right.
Almost all the major characters in this game are S tier. The returning characters from both the “old” series, and 7 are still great. But there were a slew of new characters in LaD:IW that stood out on their own.
Both of the new party members, Eric Tomizawa, and Chitose Fujinomiya are excellent additions to the cast. And both of them have some similarities. When you first meet them, they kind of suck, right? And while Tomizawa pretty quickly establishes himself as Ichiban’s new bro in America, Chitose is quite a bit more complicated and keeps you guessing which way to land with her for a majority of the game.
I also want to add that I greatly appreciate the inclusion of Seonhee as a playable party member, considering that she’s hands down the best female character in the entire franchise.
On the villain side of things we have Yutaka Yamai, who is an incredibly written antagonist. His character arc is one of the best in the series if you ask me. And finally you have Aleks Le who is nigh unstoppable at this point voicing the deceptive wheelchair bound Eiji.
The other villains in the game leave a lot to be desired. Danny Trejo as Dwight Mendez is pretty neat. But Dwight himself is just alright.The bigger offenders are ironically enough the big bads of the game.
>>>>>>>> SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
Masataka Ebina is one of the least charismatic characters in this series. To put it bluntly, he’s a chode. Like, I get that he’s supposed to be like that, but then there are times like the end of the game where he’s supposed to come across as super twisted and evil, but he just sucks ass.
Then there’s Byrce Fairchild who is one of the worst written characters RGG has ever done, and almost everything having to do with him in the story (which is half the game, by the way) is pretty bad.
>>>>>>>> END OF SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
This brings us to the real divide I have with Infinite Wealth. Half of the game is really good, and the other half is unfortunately not. Ichiban’s story starts out well enough, and I can’t stress enough how much I like characters like Tomizawa, Chitose, and Yamai who basically carry this side of the story. But when you find out what’s really going on? I just didn’t give a shit? And pretty much for the second half of that game anytime I had to switch to Ichiban I would audibly groan.
Kiryu’s story on the other hand is incredible. I’m sure if you’ve been a fan of the series for a long time then Kiryu’s Bucket List is some of the best stuff in the game. Some truly great moments with old friends, not to mention emotional ones.
I also feel like the conflict that Kiryu is usually dealing with is more of what I’m used to from the Yakuza series, and as a result it just felt right. And obviously I was on the edge of my seat the entire game wondering how it would end. I won’t say anything about it, but I think I’m happy with it? Even though the last thing you see in the game is genuinely shocking and upsetting.
So that’s a whole lotta words about Infinite Wealth’s story and characters. But if you’re not playing these games for that, then what’s the point? I mean I won’t fault you for wanting to play an even better version of the stellar turn-based combat from Yakuza: Like a Dragon. But if that’s all you’re in it for, I really can’t recommend this series in good faith to you.
Though, speaking of the combat, it’s a better version of Yakuza 7’s combat. But not perfect. I can’t say I loved the more forced proximity based nature of abilities, particularly when it came to healing (Oh God, the healing). But Infinite Wealth has some fun and creative classes, not the least of which is Kiryu’s specific class which literally lets him break the rules of the game and briefly turn it into a real-time brawler again like the original series. That’s so fucking cool it hurts.
The Sub-Stories in this game can be a bit hit or miss though. There are some great ones in Hawaii, but a lot of them are kind of underwhelming. But Kiryu’s side of things is pure nostalgia so of course I ate that up.
What else? Well the major mini-game this time is Dondoko Island which is probably the best one of these in the series. It’s essentially Yakuza Animal Crossing with some kind of shoddy action combat tossed in. I spent a lot of time here though and I enjoyed almost all of it.
Oh, but then there’s that other big mini-game… Yeah, Sujimon is still a hilarious concept for envisioning the enemies in these games are weird JRPG baddies, but they shouldn’t have made it as big of a thing as they did in this game.
Sujimon League is RGG’s attempt at another Nintendo franchise, this time Pokemon. But not like the Sujidex from Y7, this is actually full on capturing and battling with Sujimon. And it is fucking agonizing. I really felt like I was going to go insane getting to the end of this quest line, and honestly I’m just glad I bought the expensive version of the game which essentially let me cheat my way through the whole thing. It still sucked though.
So… that’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. A game with some extremely high highs, but some truly terrible lows. Overall I would still say I enjoyed the game — there really hasn’t been an RGG game I haven’t enjoyed. Including Binary Domain, and… I guess Dead Souls too. But despite that I would still say Yakuza 8 ranks pretty low in my ranking of the series as a whole.
I’m not sure what Project Century will be, if it is actually a part of the Like a Dragon series, or if it’s something else. But it already looks sick as hell. Just… don’t forget to make more Judgment games too…
7. Dragon Quest III HD-2D
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — Xenlon
Oh boy. Okay this one actually means a lot to me.
I’m not going to repeat my whole Dragon Quest story again, but to summarize: Dragon Warrior 1 on the NES was one of the first games I ever played. I played it with my Mom, and it actually helped me learn to read (I was 4). It also imprinted on my soul how cool fantasy stuff is with knights in armor, and dragons.
So yeah, DQ is a pretty personal series to me for that reason. However despite that I still haven’t actually played every game in the series. And you’d probably be surprised by which ones.
If this was a Bingo sheet, you’d get a free space for Dragon Quest III (why else would I mention this?). You could also get another easy hit by assuming I haven’t played Dragon Quest X (despite desperately wanting to) for obvious reasons. And the last one is actually Dragon Quest VIII. I dunno I tried it out when it came out and just completely bounced off of it.
So the Japanese exclusive MMO, and two of the most popular games in the entire series. Weird, huh?
I probably would have played Dragon Quest III for the first time a few years ago. I’ve always meant to pick up DQ 1,2,3 on the Switch (kind of ridiculous I haven’t since they sometimes go on sale for prices that would get me all three of them for less than $20, but eh, what can you do?) But if you’ll remember they kind of announced this remake a while ago. And once they did I figured it’d be foolish not to wait for it.
So finally it resurfaced after so long with an amazing new look, and the news that both Dragon Quest I and II will be remade in this same style, sometime next year presumably. I’ll tell you right now I can’t wait to play those two games again, especially after finally playing DQ III.
I won’t spoil it, but I knew the big “twist” a long time ago. But actually seeing it was another matter entirely. If you thought Yakuza nostalgia was a powerful thing, try calling back to one of the first video games you ever played… 34 years ago. Yeah.
I probably don’t need to go into too much detail about this game or why I like it. Dragon Quest III HD-2D is a remake with some (I assume) very nice quality of life features. A newly added ability to customize your party’s appearance, which is greatly appreciated (though I will say the original look for all those old characters are very iconic if you’ve been around the internet for a while…). And they even added a brand new vocation with the Monster Wrangler, which just so happens to be the most broken job in the game. Oops.
Alongside that there’s a fun monster capturing mini-game that unlocks new abilities for your Wrangler, and powers them up the more monsters you collect. And even a monster arena where you can make a team of three of your monsters to battle it out in a tournament.
That’s all great stuff. But at its core Dragon Quest III is still a classic JRPG from the 8-Bit era, and they haven’t drastically changed that (from what I can gather). That’s a nice way of saying the game is fairly simplistic, haha.
But that’s perfectly fine! Much in the same way that I was yearning for a game like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I also found this classic JRPG experience to be very therapeutic? I’m not gonna lie, I was going through some tough times while playing this, and I would say that it helped dramatically in getting through it.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D instills a thirst for adventure, as the game’s progression is eventually very open ended. And while the game does allow a feature to guide you to where you need to go next (I used it, ngl) that also didn’t keep me from exploring on my own. And I probably did a lot of stuff in a different sequence than others might have.
I also wanna point out that I love this game’s autobattle feature. This was something I heavily praised Dragon Quest XI for back in 2018, and I’m glad to see that the AI is still more than capable here as well. I don’t think DQ III’s combat is bad, not at all, but the autobattle does take out the tedium of having to select things in the menu all the time. Which really adds up because the random encounter rate in this game is pretty high.
I can’t tell you how comforting it was to play this game, and I really needed it at the time. And I’m glad to finally play one of the most legendary JRPGs of all time. I still don’t know that “the twist” works as well going from 3 > 1 > 2. But that’s the direction Square Enix wanted to go with it. I think for newcomers it will still be cool, just in a different way. But for me, I was awestruck to see that aspect of the game. Even if it was 32 years later than it should have been.
6. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — Chandra
Alright, time to dive right back in with another very special game.
So, my wife and I are both diehard Suikoden fans. It’s something we’ve bonded over a lot and you can bet we’re both very excited for the Suikoden I & II remasters coming out next year. But for a long time Suikoden lay dormant within Konami. Much like almost every other IP they owned until the last couple years.
For us, Suikoden is 1–5. And I guess Suikoden Tactics is an acceptable side game, and I’d probably feel the same way about Genso Suikogaiden if I’d ever had a chance to play it. So what does this mean? Is Tierkreis Suikoden? No! Is Gensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki Suikoden? No!
With that now established, I hope you can appreciate how insane it was when Rabbit and Bear Studio launched a surprise Kickstarter for a spiritual Suikoden spin-off, written by the original Suikoden “guy”, the late Yoshitaka Murayama (Rest in Peace).
We were screaming, and crying, and pulling out that credit card for damn sure! My wife and I backed the game under a single name combining our online identities and here you can see us in the credits.
Unfortunately it would be a long time until the game was eventually released (earlier this year, obviously).
Along the way the studio put out a side game to tide people over, probably bring in some additional financing, and to give people a taste of the world of Eiyuden Chronicle.
I… wish I could say anything nice about that game. Haha.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising was released back in 2022, and I don’t think it lit the world on fire for many other people either. To be fair the game isn’t even a turn-based JRPG, it’s a side-scrolling action platformer. The game literally revolves around you going around and completing chores for people in exchange for stamps for whoever knows what reason, and the plot, as such, slowly unfolds from there.
The gameplay is super dull, and it didn’t feel rewarding at all to complete those tasks. The game is very tedious and repetitive. But I think the thing that worried me the most was actually the game’s writing.
Granted, the game wasn’t written by Murayama, so it wasn’t a completely fair assumption. But I was more specifically worried about the tone of this series. Rising comes across as very juvenile (early on there’s a discussion about ‘potty training’ that is a recurring joke in Hundred Heroes even…) and not very serious at all. This too, was NOT Suikoden.
So two years passed and Hundred Heroes, the proper game that we all Kickstarted came out. And well, I’d say it lived up to expectations.
Going in, I knew it would be hard to establish an investment in this new world after clinging onto Suikoden for so long, but by the end of the game I certainly was. I still feel like the tone of a lot of the humor in the game is jarring, and if I’m being honest the voice acting is extremely hit or miss. But that didn’t stop my wife and I from enjoying the story, and picking out our favorite characters along the way.
While not set in the same universe, the spirit of Suikoden is alive in this game. A very familiar turn-based battle system complete with stand-ins for Runes, and Team-Up Attacks. There’s a lot of mini-games (though not many of them are very good. EXCEPT for the Cooking Contest. That actually lived up to the hype after that being such a highlight in Suikoden II). It’s a story about war and politics and there is in fact a version of Suikoden’s iconic “war battles”. Unfortunately, much like the other “mini-games” the war battles are kinda shitty. Which is certainly a bummer.
I think the game looks gorgeous with really high quality sprite work and backgrounds. And there’s certainly a banger or two on the soundtrack.
There was definitely a lot of criticism leveled at this game for being a “classic” JRPG. Which I found to be pretty dumb, and that ended up being true because there were only a couple dissenting reviews that tried to use that argument against Dragon Quest III HD-2D.
The game is not without its issues, as I’ve said, but the most important thing about it is that it felt like Suikoden.
And I want to give a special mention to Andrew Wheildon-Dennis for putting in an outstanding performance for the game’s main character Noah. I was a little surprised when Noah spoke in the opening of the game, but was pleasantly surprised to see he was one of the best written characters in the game, with some terrific line reads for Andrew that were both impassioned, and hilarious with some of the responses Noah would have to people.
It’s really very tragic that we lost such a talented writer as Yoshitaka Murayama, who brought one of my favorite fictional universes into existence. And I will always wonder what he would have in store for future Eiyuden Chronicles projects. Not to mention any juicy, hidden lore about the Suikoden series.
And it’s also very unfortunate about the DLC situation for the game. Originally planned to come out across August, September, October, I think? But there was a sudden delay before launch and we still don’t have any indication when those will be coming out. But I hope everything works out, and we get to play them. Because I’d love to spend more time with these characters.
5. Dragon’s Dogma II
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — “Dragon”
Dragon’s Dogma II is such a fucked up game. It’s also one of the best games this year, and a new favorite of mine because of how weird, flawed, and ambitious it is. My playthrough was definitely one of the most memorable times of the year for me.
I tried several times over the years to get into the first Dragon’s Dogma, but it never stuck. When I first tried it, I actually hated Dark Souls and thought “Oh, well this might be an easier game that’s sort of similar to Dark Souls.” At the time the term “Soulslike” didn’t exist, and just because you have a party of pawns to fight alongside you, doesn’t make the game easy.
The ending of that game was spoiled for me a long time ago, and it sounded absolutely crazy. It’s probably why I kept trying to push myself to give the game another shot over and over again. But in the end the only thing that really stuck with me from the first Dragon’s Dogma was its original opening theme song “Into Free” -Dagan- by B’z. And my pawn simply named “The Big Man” who accumulated so much RC over the years.
As some sort of sick joke they removed the theme song in future releases of Dragon’s Dogma, but luckily I always keep a backup of a mod to replace the title screen music in the PC version of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. Just in case I need to feel THE WIND IS PUSHING ME!!
Anyway, as Dragon’s Dogma 2 was getting closer to release, I got really excited about it. I thought some of the vocations looked awesome, and preview coverage was generally very positive. But really, nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the game.
First, I love this game’s character creator, which some people have joked was the prototype for the Monster Hunter Wilds character creator. You can make some really interesting looking characters, including my character Zachary who is like 8 feet tall and always walks with a hunch, swinging his gangly limbs about as he goes.
Second, I think it’s important to emphasize once again that this game is fucked up. This game actively hates you, and honestly I’m glad they added some accessibility options to the game to make it more approachable, but I feel like that would rob you of so much of the magic this game has to offer.
A pretty common example is that whenever you take a cart, which is one of two fast travel options in the game, and no, neither of them are as convenient as you would like. Anyway, when you’re riding the cart to your destination you can either enjoy the ride, or you can skip ahead to your destination. Either way, it doesn’t matter, you’re probably not going to get there.
I think over half the times I took a cart a fucking Griffin would divebomb the cart shattering it into a millions pieces and starting an impromptu monster hunt.What followed varies depending on what vocation you and your pawns are, but most of the time in my case there was destructive elemental magic popping off all around. A bunch of screaming. Zachary swinging his long arms and legs around like a whirling dervish. Utter chaos.
There was one encounter early on where my party was fighting a group of wolves. During the fight one of the wolves bit down on Zachary and dragged him around like a chew toy. As he was being torn to shreds by both fangs and rocks, my main pawn — who was always a healer by the way — commented that somebody in the group was poisoned (It wasn’t me) and then she proceeded to ignore me entirely. Wow.
On top of all that, the world of Dragon’s Dogma II is just harsh in general. Like I said, it can be a chore to get to where you need to go, and considering how massive the map is, that can be a real problem. There’s a day/night cycle and everything gets way worse at night. There are various side quests to find throughout the world, but very little indication as to what to do for them.
Resources can be limited, but even if they’re not you have to worry about encumbrance. The save system in this game is pretty brutal. There are two types of saves, but only one of them is really a “hard” save, and this can get you into trouble. Especially because the game doesn’t explain it very well.
When you die you go back to your last save. The more permanent one, or the other one. No checkpointing! There’s a chance you or your pawns could fall in an area that takes you way off course, or separated from the rest of your party. Out of range for resurrection. Or maybe just into the water that kills you instantly. Cause why not!?
There is a pandemic exclusive to pawns and it’s not easy to tell if your main pawn, or a borrowed pawn has the disease, but it can be spread, and if one of your pawns get it, you might wake up from resting one day to find that your pawn has killed a ton of people! You can resurrect them, especially story/quest relevant NPCs, but of course the resource to do that is very rare. AND is also used to revive yourself!
Does all of this sound kinda shitty? It kinda is! But also it’s incredible. I can’t tell you how many times dumb, unfortunate shit in this game made me laugh out loud. Or just how tense things can get and it starts to feel exhilarating. And stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what to do is rewarding in its own right.
I have so many fond memories of the month where I played this game pretty much non-stop while my wife sat on the couch behind me halfway paying attention to the game, while drawing copious amounts of Armored Core VI fan art and listening to the Italian band Måneskin on repeat. It was a fucking amazing time.
I can definitely see this game just not being for everyone. And I don’t know if the accessibility options help that, or not. A lot of people just wouldn’t have the patience for it, I think. But if it sounds at all interesting than I have news for you… this game’s true ending and endgame are so fucking insane in a way that you cannot even comprehend.
BUT — I can’t talk about that. Yet. But I WILL later if you wanna stick around for it. Holy shit. This game owns.
4. Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — Bahamut
Back in 2020 I gave the original Granblue Fantasy Versus the #1 spot on my game of the year list. It was the beginning of my wife and I’s “fighting game arc” we’ll call it. I won’t rehash all the stuff I discussed back then, but both of us had been fans of fighting games most of our lives, but with the exception of Zara being really good at Tekken 3 back in the day, we were admittedly pretty casual fighting game players.
I’m not gonna say we’re seasoned veterans now or anything, but thanks to GBVS being an accessible fighting game with an endearing cast of characters from the Granblue Fantasy mobile game, we were able to learn things we hadn’t before, and even spent time digging deeper into the FGC to learn more, and make that a part of our identity.
For a few years after that, my wife and I played a ton of fighting games. We’d play matches in GBVS, or Guilty Gear Strive for dozens of hours. We started building up a fighting game collection on PS4/5 and we just had a hell of a lot of fun with it.
Unfortunately despite a newly updated version of Granblue Fantasy Versus and Tekken 8, this was kind of the year we fell out of fighting games. Not entirely though, but it has taken a pretty noticeable backseat.
That has nothing to do with the quality of both those games, we actually love them. But as I’ve mentioned it’s been a rough year and just like Final Fantasy XIV we had a hard time keeping up with certain games and activities.
That still didn’t stop us from putting 150+ hours into Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising.
What is there to know about Rising vs. Vanilla GBVS? Well actually this was an extremely critical revision of the game. Not only did it add rollback netcode, which the original sorely lacked. It also added several new mechanics to the game that I’m going to say are overall a net positive.
The sad truth is that I think the original GBVS is nearly unplayable at this point. I guess in the run-up to Rising they were experimenting with some of the concepts for the new Rising mechanics, and as a result it basically ruined how that game plays. Which is really sad, since I have such a strong attachment to that game. But with the introduction of Rising, it’s not like I’d go back to the original game anyway.
Another noticeable change from the original is that the game’s main story mode, which is actually pretty good and is an important tie-in to the larger Granblue Fantasy lore, has been dramatically changed in this release of the game.
The first two parts of the story from the original game are back, with the addition of a third part that continues the story. The big difference comes in how you play through that mode. The mode is part visual novel in nature, but in the original game they actually developed a pretty neat RPG mode that had you leveling up your characters and even building up weapon grids which is a signature feature of the mobile game.
That’s no longer the case in Rising, and the story mode plays more like a traditional fighting game story mode with battles in between the story bits. They basically ripped out all the RPG components.
I’m a little conflicted about that, because I did enjoy the RPG mode. But at the same time, this is probably a much better way to experience this story if you didn’t want to commit a ton of hours to grinding out a setup.
Of course this new version of the game launched with some new characters. Four to be precise. Grimnir, Anila, Nier, and Siegfried. These are some pretty solid additions to the game, though it’s worth mentioning that Nier was completely busted upon the game’s release and she tormented the playerbase to no end.
There have also been DLC fighters as well, the first season of characters actually finished up recently and added Lucilius, 2B (Yeah, that 2B), Vane, Beatrix, Versusia, and Vikala. A pretty solid lineup if you ask me. And in January it seems like we’ll be kicking off season 2 with the first character being the hotly anticipated Sandalphon.
Most of those 150+ hours were spent playing local versus with my wife. I also have a friend who I play with online sometimes. And on top of that we also get every battle pass that comes out. Which basically adds a bunch of neat cosmetics including color pallets, weapon skins, flair and titles to customize your profile with, and at the very end of each BP is an extremely cool alternative costume for one of the characters. This is extra nice because we didn’t actually have any different outfits in base GBVS.
The battle passes aren’t too terribly hard to complete, and we’ve been pretty lazy about some of them. It’s pretty hit or miss what kind of match you’ll have. Sometimes you’ll find an even match, or sometimes one player will just completely blow out the other one. But there’s also a lot of AFK people who are either grinding out the battle pass, or individual character levels which unlock additional cosmetics at different milestones.
My wife and I don’t mind doing this, and it can be fun to get in some online play. Though sometimes I will jump online with that previously mentioned friend and we’ll just help one another easily complete the daily/weekly activities. No shame in that considering a decent chunk of the online matches against randos are literally away from their game at the time, lol.
I know that another Granblue Fantasy game came out this year, Relink which spent many years in development hell. That game is pretty cool too, but I was really disappointed with the story, and how all the “cooler” characters in the game were relegated to side content.
Plus I just have so much love and respect for Granblue Fantasy Versus, both versions. Not only did it spark a passion in fighting games, and gave us the tools we needed to learn how to even do that. But it also got us more invested in Granblue, a game that both of us still largely play as “seasonal players”, but we liked it enough that we made OCs and came up with a bunch of lore for them. And my wife found one of her favorite characters of all time in Belial.
It may not sound super impressive to you, especially if you’re not into fighting games, but this one still means a lot to us.
3. Mouthwashing
Does it have a dragon? Uh, actually, against all odds, there actually is. Yes! — Dragonbreath X Mouthwash
I’m happy that there usually seems to be at least one big surprise game that comes out of completely nowhere and claims a spot on my list. And this year it’s Mouthwashing. A sci-fi psychological horror game that is a bit of a trip and deals with some extremely dark themes.
Those of you that read the list last year might remember my #2 game — Faith: The Unholy Trinity. Well not only was that also a surprise indie horror game out of nowhere, but it was the first game I’ve ever put on one of these lists that I actually watched someone’s playthrough instead of playing it myself.
Last year we fell in love with Holostars VTuber Josuiji Shinri thanks to his outstanding let’s play of Faith. So what could be more appropriate than watching that same man play another indie horror game to be included in one of my GOTY lists!
You might notice a theme there. They’re both horror games. In fact we’re also currently watching him play through the Silent Hill 2 Remake. I both scare and startle easily, so it’s hard for me to comfortably play horror games. But I used to back in the day, and since then I’ve always had a curious fascination with the kinds of dark stories these games tend to tell, and the atmosphere built around them. I just don’t particularly want to play them myself, lol.
You couldn’t ask for someone better than Shinri to play a horror game for you. Regardless of if he’s playing a game for the first time, or replaying it he will thoroughly examine every little detail. Discuss the story and the significance of things as a game progresses. The horror genre is kind of his bread and butter, so he usually has some sort of unhinged comment about being attracted to monsters, or just really liking a creepy aesthetic.
In the case of Mouthwashing, Shinri had played the game before and he did an excellent job of teasing and foreshadowing events. He also did an amazing job with the voice acting for all the characters, and even got a little too into character at some points in the latter parts of the game.
So that’s how I experienced Mouthwashing and I couldn’t be happier than how that playthrough played out. It really allowed me to piece together the pieces of the puzzle that the game’s disjointed narrative presents.
So, it’s gonna be hard to talk much more about Mouthwashing, a very narrative heavy game without going into spoilers, so just keep that in mind.If you want a quick overview of the game it’s about five crew members of the spaceship Tulpar. The crew members all work for Pony Express, a long freight cargo company. At the beginning of the game we find out that the Tulpar has crashed for some reason, and now the crew is unsure what to do. They’re not even sure what kind of cargo they’re transporting.
The game’s story skips around to different points in time in a very fragmented way, and it’s up to the player to put the pieces together and figure out what’s really going on.
So if that sounds at all interesting to you, then I’d advise you to go play it or watch it for yourselves. Because it’d suck if you got spoiled by reading about it here. If you don’t care about seeing it for yourself, or don’t mind spoilers then feel free to read on.
>>>>>>>> SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
Mouthwashing is inherently a game about flawed people, as everyone onboard the Tulpar has aspects about them that they either aren’t proud of, or in some cases are too blind to see in themselves.
The phrases “I hope this hurts” and “take responsibility” are seen throughout the game and if we’re just getting right down to it, this is largely aimed at Jimmy.
Jimmy is essentially the main character of the game, but also the villain. I think for most people he’s their least liked character in the game, and for good reason — he’s a fucking asshole.
I don’t think the game is very subtle about that fact. We learn throughout the course of the game that Jimmy has an inferiority complex and just wants what Curly has. A man who is supposed to be his friend. He wants it so much that he literally rapes the woman who’s in love with Curly.
The stuff with Anya hits like a ton of bricks because from the get go she’s a very likable and sweet character. And to go through such a tragic thing. But Curly isn’t without fault either, as Anya repeatedly tries to tell Curly about Jimmy.
But Curly doesn’t listen.
Jimmy needs to take responsibility for raping a woman. Jimmy needs to take responsibility for causing the crash because he didn’t want to deal with the repercussions of his actions. Jimmy needs to take responsibility for Anya committing suicide when she felt like there was no way out. Jimmy needs to take responsibility for getting Daisuke killed for his own selfish reasons. Jimmy needs to take responsibility for killing Swansea who was trying to deliver justice to Jimmy for all the bad shit he’s done. Jimmy needs to take responsibility for what happened to Curly.
But he doesn’t. In the end he selfishly puts Curly in the one remaining escape pod, thinking to himself that he was taking responsibility by performing this “selfless act of kindness”. And then he points a gun at himself and kills himself so he doesn’t actually have to take responsibility for any of it.
But what about Curly?
Ultimately all of this could have been avoided if Curly took responsibility. He was presented with evidence he already knew. Jimmy had problems. But he wanted to give his friend the benefit of the doubt. He wanted to see the best in him, and he just refused to see the warnings.
And now all who can do is watch. In an attempt to prevent the crash Curly becomes brutally mutilated and misfigured. Now a quadriplegic the only thing he can even do is just watch.
It’s easy to hate Jimmy. But maybe it’s a little harder to hate Curly? Maybe he reminds you of a time when you looked the other way.
In many ways this is a story about how Curly and Jimmy hurt the people around them. As I said in the beginning I think each of these characters is flawed in some way, but they didn’t have any say in the problems that Jimmy and Curly caused together.
Let me set aside my interpretation of the story for a second to talk about a few gameplay related things. I’m sorry, I didn’t really know where else to put these, lol.
The events in the game were presumably what really happened on the Tulpar. But the more horror-ish aspects of the game seem symbolic and metaphorical. Jimmy keeps imagining more horrific iterations of Polly that are presented as monsters.
Though I think it’s pretty apparent that they don’t really exist. I’ll say that the gameplay portions of these sequences were the one real negative thing I could point out about the game. I didn’t play them, obviously. But I don’t think “forced stealth” is ever anything people truly want out of a game. Still they serve as the most terrifying moments in the game, so I suppose that’s something.
There’s also the vile scene towards the end of the game where Jimmy has Curly strapped into an apparatus and is force feeding him pieces of himself. I’m not entirely sure I understand what that represents, but it’s a really fucked up scene!
Also the frequent substance abuse in this game hits a little too close to home in a lot of ways. I don’t have anything deeper to say about that, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing or anything. It just kind of hits different for my wife and I.
I talked about what I think “Take Responsibility” means, but there’s another message we see in the game and that’s “I hope this hurts.” I feel like this once again is mainly pointed at Jimmy in the context of this story. But there was recently an interesting interview with the game’s writer, Johanna Kasurinen, conducted by Gene Park for The Washington Post.
Kasurinen reminds the interviewer at the end of the interview about the phrase “I hope this hurts”. Who this is directed at is a matter of debate. I think naturally most people will assume it’s Jimmy, and I think that’s accurate. But Kasurinen calls it the “instigating concept” of the game.
And a quote from Kasurinen here: “At the risk of sounding pretentious, the medium is the message,” she said. “I hope certain people in the gaming industry play this game. I hope they see themselves. And I hope it hurts. I hope it hurts, hurts, hurts.”
Just something to chew on, I suppose.
>>>>>>>> END OF SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
2. Persona 3 Reload
Does it have a dragon? Yes! — Seiryu
Man, where to start with Persona 3 Reload?
I guess first I’ll say that I always considered Persona 3 to be my favorite game in the trilogy of the “modern” Persona games. And I can safely say Reload helped reinforce that opinion.
I haven’t actually played through Persona 3 since replaying the game once Persona 3 FES came out back in 2008.
I tried to play Persona 3 Portable back when that came out, but I’m not a fan. I appreciate that people really enjoyed the FeMC route, and I’ll always be curious as to how those different social links play out, and how certain aspects from the original story (namely Junpei’s love interest…) play out in that route.
Despite that, I still think it’s a terrible version of that game. It doesn’t include the epilogue The Answer (though more on that much later) for one, but more importantly in order to port the game to the PSP they essentially decided to turn anything outside of the Tartarus into a visual novel.
This is such a… lame way to experience that game. So I don’t really consider it a good option if you want to play the game. Unless you really want to play the FeMC route. Which is understandable.
Buuuuuut….. FES isn’t really the most appealing option either considering that in the original Persona 3 you couldn’t control your party members actions. So this led to many “Marin Karin” jokes at poor Mitsuru’s expense.
And this proved to be a pretty shitty dilemma! Primarily because my wife never got to play Persona 3 despite enjoying 4 and 5. But she didn’t want to deal with the PSP version’s cutbacks either.
So it just never really happened. Just a lot of years going by where I wished they’d release a “Definitive” edition of Persona 3 like they did with Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal.
Enter Persona 3 Reload! Now it’s maybe a bit misleading to suggest this is the “Definitive” version of the game, considering it’s missing the entire FeMC route, much to many, many people’s dismay.
However they did at least include The Answer as paid DLC for Reload… So I’m just going to go ahead and say between that, the fact that it’s an incredible remake, and the convenience factor make Reload the right way to play Persona 3.
Reload is a gorgeous looking game that actually shows off Atlus’s signature style in the best way, unlike Metaphor: ReFantazio. The new character models and character artwork are all huge improvements over the original art and models which haven’t aged especially well.
The game also has an entirely redone soundtrack by Atlus Sound Team featuring the iconic lyrical flow of Lotus Juice once more. I will say however that this game’s version of Mass Destruction is one of the only songs I can point to as being outright inferior to the original. I’m not the biggest fan of the new female vocalist, and the way she specifically says “Baby, BAY-BEE” pisses me off for whatever reason, lol.
Along with the music there’s an entirely new cast of English voice actors. Now here was an aspect I was a little concerned about before the game came out. Those original Persona 3 voices are iconic. And while I think anything is an improvement over creepy ass Vic Mignogna, I wasn’t ready to let go of some of the actors who I considered to be the foundation of modern English voice acting in video games.
Yuri Lowenthall (Minato), Michelle Ruff (Yukari), Liam O’Brien (Akihiko), Karen Strassman (Aigis)… it’s a star studded cast in retrospect. But more than anything I was worried about Mitsuru’s voice. Tara Platt was Mitsuru. So with that said, how do I think the new voices turned out?
Absolutely phenomenal! We have Aleks Le (Minato), Zeno Robinson (Junpei), Alejandro Saab (Akihiko), Suzie Yeung (Fuuka), Dawn M. Bennett (Aigis),and Lizzie Freeman (Metis). This is the new generation of voice actors who have come out swinging, kicking ass, and just crushing their roles. It’s one hit after the next. You love to see it!
As for Mitsuru? I’ve become a big fan of Allegra Clark over the last couple years as she frequently voices characters that I really like. As for her portrayal of Mitsuru? Absolutely perfect! I don’t think I can go back to the original anymore…
As an aside, a lot of the original voice actors are actually in the game voicing other characters. I feel like this was a really nice and sweet touch, and it makes me happy to see some of these big names coming back to voice minor roles in a remake of a game that helped launch their careers.
Reload also features a boatload of quality of life changes that Persona fans could only dream about back on the PS2. Some of the biggest ones being able to choose skills when fusing demons, the removal of the divisive fatigue system from the original, a combat system that has the modern sensibilities of games like Persona 5, additional teleporters in Tartarus that makes it easier to avoid losing progress, the ability to retry battles that you fail, the ability to save anywhere outside of the Tartarus dungeon, additional ways to increase your social stats, plenty of new items and some abilities that were added to the series in later games, and finally the ability to craft equipment with materials you find it Tartarus or are gifted by a Persona you’re close with.
Phew! That’s a mouthful.
Easily one of the best additions to the game are the new “Link Episodes” which are similar to social links with your male party members (+Ryoji). I’m gonna be honest, I think these are probably the best written parts of the game? By no means does that mean the rest of the writing is bad, but the story and social links do adhere to a game from a very different point in time. The additional scenes you get with the guys who normally get shafted in the original release are so awesome. Some really touching ones, and some hilarious ones thrown in there too. It also obviously helps flesh out those characters more which is a big improvement over the original release.
I did say that I would bring up The Answer later, so here it is. Now formally known as Episode Aigis, the epilogue to Persona 3 added in FES has also been remade in Reload. I remember really liking The Answer, but I do have some mixed feelings about it all these years later.
I think the additional story, and closure it provides to Persona 3 are amazing, but there’s just not enough story to go around. And since there aren’t any social activities to do the majority of your time in Episode Aigis will be spent exploring The Abyss of Time and fighting a lot of battles,
I still think the highs of the epilogue make it worth it if you liked the main game, but I will no longer act like it’s more valuable than say… an entirely new route of the main game featuring a female MC with very different social link options and what probably has to be some pretty significant story changes. So, you win FeMC crowd, you happy?
There’s not much more I can say about Persona 3 Reload as a game, but there’s plenty I can say about my playthrough of it.
Back at the beginning I mentioned that I always wanted my wife to experience Persona 3, because as I said, for my money — it’s the best game in the series. And while I would have been perfectly fine with playing an incredibly well done remake of Persona 3 on my own, it was really the promise of sharing it with my wife that firmly made it one of the games I was most looking forward to this year.
It took us most of the year to play through the game. I’ve mentioned it several times already but there were a lot of issues that prevented my wife and I from playing either the same games we usually did, or at least the amount of time we used to play them.
So Persona 3 Reload was a slow burn.
I don’t think it took her very long at all before she began to appreciate it. She was already a fan of the soundtrack, and had always wanted to play the game after all. So there was an established interest. But I don’t think she expected to like it nearly as much as she does now.
The flow of the game went roughly like this: My wife would mainly pay attention during all the social elements of the game, as well as the main story scenes obviously. Basically anytime a character was talking (not counting battle). And then for those long treks through the Tartarus she would find some way to occupy herself.
I know she said that sometimes that worked out really well for her, but other times she would just dread it when it was time for the monthly Tartarus trip. Haha.
She quickly found herself getting attached to the trio of seniors, Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Shinji. She also liked Minato a lot and now thinks of him as the best MC in the series. I know there were a few social links she really liked, like the student council president, the doctor/art student, the drunk monk, and the striped sick man at the park. She also absolutely loved Strega as well.
A lot of the other social links that weren’t with party members kinda fell flat for her, which is fair. If I have one criticism of Persona 3, going back to the original even, the game’s social links are kind of a mixed bag when compared to Persona 4, and especially 5.
I was actually very surprised by how my opinion of certain characters changed. For years I said that Ken and Ryoji fucking sucked. I definitely don’t think that anymore and now I like both of them quite a bit. It’s hard to say if that’s due to me literally being 16 years older since the last time I played the game, or if the link episodes are just that damn good. Maybe a little bit of both?
I mentioned how much my wife loves Strega, and for my money they make up some of the better villains in the series, and it seems like my wife agrees with me on that. Plus their battle music fucking SLAPS!
Alright, now it’s time to get into a little bit of spoiler stuff. I realize this game is 18 years old, but Reload just came out this year so it’s very likely there are people who will be playing it for the first time. And I don’t want to ruin that for someone… again.
>>>>>>>> SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
So I need to preface this by saying I’m kind of a spoiler-phobe. It’s not the end of the world or anything, but I really do try to avoid spoilers as much as possible. Simply because I believe your first experience with something will have the strongest lasting impression. So to have something really cool spoiled for you can really hamper that first experience.
I also don’t like spoiling anything for anyone either if I can help it. And that goes double for my wife. One of the things that we’ve bonded the most over after getting together has been sharing our favorite things with one another. Be that TV, Movies, Music, and yes of course video games.
So I actually get anxious about my wife having something spoiled for her when I really want to see her raw reaction to something big. It brings me so much joy when she gets so excited at something. Or emotional as the case may be.
So I couldn’t really tell you why this happened, but I previously thought it was one of the shittiest things I’d done to her.
I can’t really recall it very clearly, but I had been asking her to play Persona 3 for a long while, like a matter of years. And it didn’t seem like it was going to happen. So I’m guessing one day I was just feeling very… frustrated about the situation and I, for reasons I’m still not quite sure, spoiled the ending of the game for her.
I know, I know! I’m a piece of shit. In my defense I don’t think I did this maliciously like a fucking “Snape Kills Dumbledore!” drive-by or whatever. I think it’s pretty likely that I was just like “You’re never going to play this. Do you want me to just spoil the ending for you?”.
Also, also in my defense, my wife feels very differently about spoilers than I do. She isn’t nearly as cautious about avoiding them, sometimes they don’t even bother her, and other times she’ll just get impatient and look up the spoiler herself. Strangely enough, if she gets spoiled on something, it makes her more interested in how the spoiler will happen.
So… I think it’s very possible she was like “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” And when I told her (I think) there was this very real “Oh, I kinda wish you didn’t tell me that.” reaction and it was in that moment that I knew I fucked up.
There is a silver lining to this! But I’ll get to that in a bit. Something I did not spoil for her though was Shinji’s death in early October. When we started playing the game and got to Shinji he quickly became a favorite character of hers. So partly out of not wanting to spoil the second biggest spoiler in the game, and partly because I was kind of dreading how she’d react when we got there anyway. I kept that shit on lock, lol.
When that part finally came up she didn’t cry like I thought she would. She was just furious about it. That’s also an emotional reaction, just not the one I was expecting. Once she calmed down I think she got a little more emotional about it the other way.
But she’s also not someone who hates to see her favorites die. In fact she gets pretty annoyed when deaths are retconned. She also didn’t hold it against Takaya and still really liked him. I only say all this because I feel like some people are just lacking the… emotional maturity…? To like, accept something like that. But I digress.
Alright, so for the end of the game, we obviously both knew what was coming at the end. But that didn’t stop her from getting emotional about the death of Strega, or being so hyped it brought tears to her eyes when Burn My Dread starts playing in the final showdown with Nyx.
After that, I totally forgot there’s this whole chance to go around and talk to all your social links for additional scenes. And while many of these were quite good, there was just this tension that stuck in the air. Me knowing exactly what was going to happen. And she was wondering how and when it was going to happen.
That brings us to one of the most beautiful endings in a game I can think of.
I want to preface this by saying that my wife really did not like Aigis at first. She was never a fan of the design, and she thought she wasn’t all that great when she initially joined the party. But over the course of the game she eventually thawed on those feelings, and really began to genuinely like Aigis. What’s more, she felt so strongly about the Minato and Aigis ship that she forced me to hook up with her even though we had already committed to a relationship with Mitsuru. Feels bad. But honestly it didn’t take too much convincing. I was really feeling it too.
So there on the rooftop of Gekkoukan High. A very tired Minato laid his head down on Aigis lap. And he just falls asleep… never to wake up again.
I have to say that Reload somehow made this scene even more impactful and beautiful than it already was, and I don’t think it’s just because of the upgraded graphics.
As we were getting closer to the moment when I knew it was going to happen, I just started sobbing hard. And my wife could already tell what was about to happen and she too was sobbing hard. Being able to share such a strong emotional response like that with her is always the sign of a truly great bit of storytelling. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
The crazy thing is though that my wife actually thinks that being spoiled on that ending made it even more impactful because she knew what was happening. As opposed to the feeling of being a little unsure like “Did he just…?”
All I can say is I’m really glad it turned out alright in the end. And that’s all I could ever ask for.
>>>>>>>> END OF SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
1. Elden Ring: Shadow of The Erdtree
Does it have a dragon? YES! — CURSE YOU BAYLE!!!!
Really? I’m going to give the game of the year award to DLC? Ugh.
Before I talk about Shadow of The Erdtree I just wanted to say a few things about the incredibly dumb controversy surrounding The Game Awards nomination of SoTE for Game of The Year. If you’ve seen my lists before then you probably already know my stance on this.
It’s not uncommon for me to include an on-going game that I happened to play a ton of on my lists. I’ve also honored expansions for games before, even giving the Final Fantasy XIV expansion Shadowbringers my game of the year award for 2019.
I understand people are going to have different criteria and expectations when it comes to personal lists versus a publication, or award shows. But it turns out that surprise, surprise — a lot of vocal people on the internet don’t actually know how these things work.
I was watching a YouTuber I subscribe to who got really furious about The Game Awards. He was complaining that they were rigged apparently because Arcane didn’t win best adaptation, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth didn’t win game of the year.
He went on to talk about how all the judges for the show are newspaper journalists who don’t even play video games. And the extra cherry on top, especially considering the recent dealings with PEGI. When asked what Balatro was he said “I don’t know, it’s some gambling game.”
I realize not everyone is as plugged into the industry as I am. Not even trying to brag about that, this is literally what I do. It’s video games. Nothing else.
If you don’t believe me then you can take Jeff Gerstmann’s word for it. A man that has been in the industry for longer than a lot of the people who complained about Shadow of The Erdtree being nominated have been alive.
Jeff’s take on the whole situation is that if enough judges feel like a game, any sort of playable game be it new, old, updated with DLC or an expansion — if enough people felt strongly enough about that to nominate it, then there’s nothing in the “rules” that says otherwise. Despite what some ignorant people online might tell you.
What about all the people who were dragging Keighley and The Game Awards for “bending the rules” to nominate Shadow of The Erdtree “just so it could win.” Those people sure shut the fuck real quick when the “DLC” didn’t even win a single award. What’s wrong? I thought that was the whole reason they were doing this? 🙂
Anyway, sorry. I’m a little bitter with how that whole situation turned out. Especially considering I think that was one of the best TGAs they’ve ever had. And while I’m salty Astro Bot won, I don’t believe it’s any sort of grand conspiracy. I mean, I’m not even that surprised honestly — it’s the highest scoring reviewed game this year. Did people think that didn’t count for anything?
It’s all dumb. People are dumb. And that’s never going to change.
Anyway, with all that crap out of the way, let’s talk about Shadow of The Erdtree! Or Shadow of The Nerdtree, which is what Google Docs recommends as a possible spellcheck.
Elden Ring was my game of the year for 2022, and it was in stiff competition with Live A Live which arguably I like more than Elden Ring, but I couldn’t deny how much of a presence Elden Ring occupied that year. Which is ultimately why I gave it the win.
When DLC was announced for the game you can bet your ass people got excited. Just seeing a short teaser for the DLC was enough to send lore fanatics into a frenzy speculating what the DLC was going to be about. It turns out some of those people were spot on (Miquella) and others were proven wrong (Godwyn. Which by the way I still don’t know why that was a thing a lot of people expected as opposed to Miquella which seemed a lot more apparent.)
After that initial trailer, it would be quite some time before we heard anything about it again. Last year was Armored Core VI’s year, and that caught on in a much bigger way than it had previously outside of Japan. But that did little to satiate the people who were salivating for the next Elden Ring adventure.
Then in February of this year From Soft dropped the bomb on us. Shadow of The Erdtree was formally announced with an insanely hype trailer, and people were losing their fucking minds.Take it from me, I was one of them.
In the months leading up to Shadow of The Erdtree I gradually became obsessed with Elden Ring again. I played through the game again with a new character. And I was consuming so much Elden Ring content that I was basically living that game for parts of this year.That fervor just continued to build up until it was at the point of bursting.
And then on June 20th the expansion was released to the world. And by the 24th I had finished everything in the expansion, lmao!
Shadow of The Erdtree isn’t short, and it’s obviously not a cakewalk either. So you better believe I was eating, breathing, and shitting that game. It was almost exclusively the only thing I did during those four days after its release. I barely slept. The whole thing almost felt like a fever dream, but it was fucking glorious. Easily the best weekend of the year for me, hands down.
I don’t think this is a hot take by any means, but I believe Shadow of The Erdtree is the best part of Elden Ring now. The densely compacted map that makes up The Land of Shadow is initially deceptive. Notoriously director Hidetaka Miyazaki had said that the map would be about the size of Limgrave from the base game. He however “failed” to mention that there is an obscene amount of verticality in The Land of Shadow, thus the expansion is far bigger than it might originally seem.
SoTE contains some of the coolest bosses in the entire game within it, not the least of which is my personal favorite Rellana, as well as the poster boy of the expansion Messmer. And the epic showdown awaiting you at the end of the expansion is infamous to say the least.
Other highlights include the strangely endearing Scadutree Avatar, and Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame who awaits you in a very secluded out of the way area that ranks up there with one of the wildest areas From Soft has ever come up with.
Speaking of, some of the locations in The Land of Shadow are the most gorgeous scenery we’ve ever seen from the famed studio. The enchanting blue sea of flowers that expand all across the Cerulean Coast being the most noteworthy one.
Shadow of The Erdtree is also way creepier than the base game of Elden Ring. In fact I wouldn’t really consider Elden Ring to be all that creepy. But take a trip into the Abyssal Woods, or traverse the extremely upsetting Finger Ruins.
SoTE is also home to the biggest and most ambitious dungeon From Soft has ever designed. The Shadow Keep has to be the best dungeon they’ve ever cooked up.
Another thing that I really loved about the expansion is that it features a small cast of important characters. And they’re kind of unlike anything From Soft has done before. There have always been friendly (and hostile) NPCs in the Dark Souls series, as well as Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls. Most of the time these questlines can be easily broken if you make one wrong misstep, or you might not even know about them to begin with.
Shadow of The Erdtree is different. Miquella’s Followers are an important part of the overall story and progression of the expansion. It’s not strictly required to follow their questlines to completion, but it is encouraged and made readily more apparent than ever before. The outcome of the game’s finale can vary dramatically depending on who you chose to side with or help. And the whole thing ends with a confrontation between you and the remaining Followers. It’s essentially a gank boss, but it’s actually really fucking cool?
My favorite of Miquella’s Followers is Needle Knight Leda. The most fanatical of Miquella’s Followers. The kind of girl you think “I can fix her.” But no, you really can’t. I love her.
As I mentioned before some of my favorite bosses were Rellana, Twin Moon Knight. Who is actually Renalla’s sister from the base game. Unlike her sister she’s clad head to toe in one of the coolest looking armor sets in the game, and she arguably wields one of the coolest weapons as well. Rellana’s Twin Blades, a pair of Light Greatswords infused with both magic and fire. She’s essentially a female Pontiff Sulyvahn. (More on the new weapon types in the expansion in a bit.)
Of course there’s also Messmer The Impaler who lives up to the hype. A very cool character, and boss fight (maybe we’ll talk more about it later?). Interestingly Rellana and Messmer are actually kind of a canonical ship within the lore, and the community totally ran with it. There’s lots of good and cute fan art out there.
I alluded to the new weapon times a bit ago, and for the most part the expansions 8 new weapon types are all fun new options, many of them being pretty viable. And some of them being downright broken depending on which patch you were on.
The three new weapon types I thought were the coolest were the Perfume Bottles, the Thrusting Shields, and of course the Light Greatswords.
Perfume Bottles were one of those previously mentioned busted weapons, and I’ll admit one of my biggest “crimes” in the expansion is that I cheated myself out of having a memorable Bayle boss fight by nuking him into the fucking ground. I think they suck now, but I still think they’re really neat.
The Thrusting Shields are another really neat concept. Basically a shield with a thrusting blade like attachment that allows you to go on the offense while also playing defensively because, well, it’s a shield after all. There are actually two of these in the expansion and if you get them both you can dual wield them for a fun time. I should note these were also pretty busted in one of the earlier iterations of the DLC. Fun times!
Light Greatswords are objectively the best new weapon type though. They combine the reach of a Greatsword, while being much lighter and allowing for much more nimble combat. They also have what are probably my favorite moveset From has ever designed. It’s just so god damn fluid and feels incredible! It looks awesome too.
On top of that there’s an Ash of War in the DLC that is exclusive to Light Greatswords. Your character assumes a stance for a brief moment before launching into the air and dive bombing onto their target. This does a ton of poise damage, and it hits like a truck too. There’s even a Talisman you can combine with it to enhance the effectiveness of stance based abilities. It honestly just feels like the most well realized weapon of the bunch.
There are also some incredibly potent Sorceries and Incantations that further rock the divide between INT and FTH based casters. Both of them see some huge upgrades, as well as some really awesome looking spells.
There’s also no shortage of crazy lore in the DLC. Some highlights being the story surrounding St. Trina. The Finger Creepers. A horrific twist on the Living Jars everyone loved from the base game that further plays into Shadow of The Erdtree’s surprising lean into the horror genre. And some crazy revelations about Marika.
I feel like now is probably the best time to address the other big SoTE controversy that came about upon the game’s release. While critics gave the expansion glowing reviews, there were a number of angry players who insisted the game was too hard for its own good. And that it was impossible to enjoy it.
It’s important to note that Shadow of The Erdtree features a separate method of leveling your character up aside from the traditional levels you get from runes. There are hidden items called Scadutree Fragments that upon collecting enough of them will allow the player to level up their Scadutree Blessing. Each level of Scadutree Blessing bolsters up your stats while you’re in The Land of Shadow.
They are essentially required to play the DLC unless you’re some sort of expert player, or just really want to bang your head against a challenge. And this information is made blatantly clear to the player in a tutorialized way that From Soft typically doesn’t do. They want players to go hunt for Scadutree Frgaments. It’s part of the progression through The Land of Shadow, it naturally encourages exploration.
The problem is, as it often is, people are fucking stupid. For whatever reason boneheaded Capital “G” Gamers were either too stubborn or too stupid to figure out that this was basically a mandatory requirement to go through the DLC. So instead of hunting for the Fragments they just throw themselves at the first boss they find over and over again. Getting increasingly furious because apparently the game is unfair and too hard.
I want to emphasize that I’m by no means an expert at these games, but that isn’t to say I haven’t become surprisingly good at them. But there’s some content across the various modern From games that I still struggle with. Dark Souls 2 Scholar of The First Sin is a miserable revision of that game, and I already wasn’t on the best of terms with that game to begin with. The Old Hunters DLC is legitimately tough and it took me like a dozen hours to finally beat the Orphan of Kos.
Every few months for the past three years I would bash my head against Dark Souls 3’s Sister Friede boss fight. Somehow in the midst of all the Elden Ring hype I finally managed to beat her. Only to be greeted by The Ringed City DLC. Now if you want to talk about “unfair” and “unfun” my money is on that fucking thing.
I’m just trying to say here that, hey — these games are hard. Even for experienced players. That said…
Shadow of The Erdtree might be the easiest DLC From has included in one of their Soulslike games. If you follow the god damn instructions and collect the god damn Scadutree Fragments, suddenly the game becomes a lot more manageable. That isn’t enough? Use Spirit Ashes. Use the Mimic Tear! What sense is there in some puffed up notion of “Gamer Pride” when you’re sitting there fully admitting that you’re having an awful time getting your ass handed to you over and over again.
My favorite thing from all this is that after years of the worst kind of Souls fans constantly making jokes about “journalism mode”, it was the games journalist who reviewed the game, did what they were supposed to do, and didn’t have that hard of a time with it. Suddenly all the tryhard jerk offs were the joke. You love to see it!
There’s just so much stuff packed into Shadow of The Erdtree, and it’s easy to see how someone could get lost in it for an entire weekend. It wasn’t that I wanted to rush through the game, it was just that I could not stop myself from playing it. Shadow of The Erdtree definitely belongs up there aside Bloodborne’s The Old Hunters DLC as some of the best content From has made. And when it comes to matters of DLC it doesn’t get much better than this.
Now we wait for Nightreign!
And the award goes to…
Game of The Year 2024: Elden Ring Shadow of The Erdtree
Best New Character 2024: Aventurine (Honkai Star Rail) — As soon as Aventurine arrives on the scene he demands a certain level of attention. He’s too sly for his own good, not to mention he’s fucking hot. Aventurine is one of the best parts of Penacony, which is just generally incredible most of the time anyway. By far the best thing about Aventurine though is his chemistry with Dr. Ratio. I didn’t even like Ratio before Penacony! But these two have some of the best moments in Penacony and I loved them for that.
Best Soundtrack 2024: Persona 3 Reload -
Atlus Sound Team’s reimagined soundtrack for Persona 3 Reload takes an already legendary OST and then just improves on it. Usually. As I mentioned I’m not the biggest fan of the new Mass Destruction, but instead we get an even better Iwatodai Dorm theme, a hot new take on Deep Breath Deep Breath, and of course Burn My Dread. Also the trio of boss musics between Unavoidable Battle, Master of Tartarus -Reload-, and Batle Hymn of The Soul -Reload- go so fucking hard that it’s almost disgusting. Still one of the all time greats!
Best Sound Design: Silent Hill 2 (2024) -
Silent Hill 2’s soundtrack is no slouch either, but I have to commend Blooper Team for their incredibly disturbing and outstanding sound design. Every good horror game is dripping with horrific atmosphere, but Blooper Team did some sick shit with this remake.There are so many moments where the most unhinged sounds will tense your whole body up, and the visceral grunts and moans of not only the monsters but James himself as well feel incredibly violent. Sexual even. Which is very appropriate for Silent Hill 2 in particular.
Best Indie Game 2024: Mouthwashing -
Kind of the only indie game I spent much time with this year, but don’t let that discourage you from this tragic tale that developer Wrong Organ has produced here. It’s a psychological mystery that provides some food for thought and completely owns its low polygon aesthetic to a great degree.
Best Male Voice Actor 2024: Andrew Russell (Boothill — Honkai Star Rail) -
It could have gone either way between Aventurines disarming sex voice portrayed by Camden Sutkowski, but I ultimately have to give the nod to his fellow Honkai Star Rail voice actor Andrew Russell who is responsible for one of the most memorable performances of the year. Boothill’s soft southern drawl combined with his hilarious censorship quirk hard sold me on Boothill. Also Andrew Russell did a full on cover, as Boothill, of Zenless Zone Zero’s Burnice’s “Burning Desires” song. It’s fucking incredible.
Best Female Voice Actor 2024: Allegra Clark (Mitsuru Kirijo — Persona 3 Reload, Acheron — Honkai Star Rail, Liza and Ilenia — Unicorn Overlord, Rosetta — Granblue Fantasy: Relink) -
Allegra Clark had quite an eventful year and ended up showing up in a ton of games I played. She really has become one of my favorite voice actors, and I think that seed was planted back in Genshin Impact with Beidou, arguably one of my favorite characters in that game. I want to call special attention to her performance as Acheron and Mitsuru though. Acheron is one of the coolest characters in Honkai Star Rail. And as for Mitsuru, it’s such a perfect portrayal of one of my favorite characters, she makes her sound so sexy…
Best Story 2024: Honkai Star Rail’s Penacony Arc -
I feel like if I had been able to play through Metaphor: ReFantazio that might actually be the winner this year, but that’s not a knock against Penacony which, once again, let me just say is the most I’ve ever been invested in a gacha game’s story. A really neat setting as the land of dreams, with an outstanding cast of characters, and an intriguing plot through and through. Penacony was so damn good y’all.
Biggest Surprise 2024: Mouthwashing -
I certainly wasn’t expecting Mouthwashing going into this year, and I also didn’t know I needed it. But I’m glad I came along for the ride, and it’s always a special treat when an unexpected gem falls into your lap.
Biggest Disappointment 2024: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth -
What a bummer. I wish I could enjoy this game as much as most people seem to, but there are just too many things about the game that I didn’t like. There are genuinely good moments in Rebirth, and I wish there were more of those. And less… Queen’s Blood, and… every other fucking mini-game in the game. I realize that Final Fantasy kind of hit a point where there were a lot of mini-games in them, for whatever reason, and the original Final Fantasy VII was no different. But the sheer magnitude of mini-games in this fucking game…
I liked exploring most of the areas in the game, it felt very comforting to go around and check everything off the map. But then you have shitholes like Me? Gongaga! that made me want to run out into oncoming traffic.
Most of the characters are still really well written and have great interactions. Barret in particular. The remake’s take on the Coral segment is such an improvement over the original, at least in terms of Barrett’s story. And the confrontation with Dyne seriously made my wife and I cry.
Yuffie was actually pretty cool in the Intergrade DLC for Remake. It actually made me like her a lot more whereas I didn’t originally. Unfortunately the person in charge of writing her in Rebirth decided you should feel the urge to punch her in the throat at least once every couple minutes.
The game looks jaw droppingly gorgeous, and it’s exciting and nostalgic to see the classic areas reimagined. I was also on board with the story up to a point. And of course being someone who loves Crisis Core, all the stuff with Zack was awesome.
But then the game kind of shits the bed with the ending. I honestly don’t think I even understood what happened. And I don’t know if I like where the story is going. Then again, who actually knows where the story is going? I thought they were onto something pretty solid with Remake. Like the meta concept of fans expecting a faithful remake, but that the game would instead subvert expectations.
You know, Vincent was pretty awesome in this game. But the Shinra Manor mini-game with Cait Sith made me want to make extra sure I was good and dead when I get hit by oncoming traffic.
They ruined Cid’s whole character and story! It’s fucking tragic. They decided Red XIII was too cool so they decided to make him an incredibly fucking stupid kid who’s voice is really annoying.
Yeah. I guess I do actually kind of hate this game now that I think about it.
Oh I also decided I don’t really like Remake’s combat system anymore, so that’s yet another reason to be completely whelmed by the final game in the trilogy.
Best Moment 2024: Dragon’s Dogma II Endgame -
>>>>>>>> MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
Alright, I promised I’d talk about Dragon’s Dogma II’s endgame. But I pretty much have to explain the whole thing. From memory, I didn’t look any of this up to remind myself, so bear with me.
So, once you get to the end of Dragon’s Dogma II you’ll encounter the titular “Dragon”. At this point you have a choice between two endings. The bad ending involves walking away from fighting the dragon. The other “good” ending leads into an extended sequence where you ride on the dragon’s back until you reach your destination. Essentially the final boss arena. And there you go! You beat Dragon’s Dogma II. Your character returns to the kingdom of Vermund and claims his rightful place on the throne.
At this point you get a cool ending credit sequence where your character watches from the throne as the credits roll by. But wait, it seems like there’s some inconspicuous ghost character sitting in the room, demanding your attention. But you can’t do anything, the game is over.
The game spits you back out to your most recent save before doing the final dungeon. Huh, well now what? I dunno, why don’t we go fight the “Dragon” again for old times sake? So you repeat the whole process to get the “Good” ending. You’re back at the throne room, you can go sit on the throne and watch the credits roll. But instead you decide to go see what’s up with the ghostly figure. He asks you if you want to go fight that dragon again, but this time with a magic sword.
Sure, why not? Last dungeon. Agree to fight the dragon. Now you’re on his back again. Okay, what do we do with the sword? How about we clamber our way across the dragon and stab it in the chest? Sure, let’s do it!
This part is a little foggy to me, but, the dragon isn’t happy about you climbing across him to try and kill him. He tries to do his best to get rid of you, but you’re persistent. Things aren’t looking good. Then bam! Your main pawn transforms into a fucking dragon and comes to save you. Shit is crazy. Do we stab the dragon? Nope. How about we stab ourselves because our life is intrinsically linked with the dragon, so if you die, he dies? That sounds pretty cool, so let’s do it.
We fucking die and fall into an abyss. But then…
The dragon tells us we fucked up the cycle and now the world is going to be destroyed. So good job asshole.
Boom! Title Card!
The fucking cold open! This whole time, when you were on the game’s main menu it said “Dragon’s Dogma”, but now it’s finally revealed to us “Dragon’s Dogma II”. Holy shit!!!
The world is in bad shape, all the water has evaporated or something, your pawns are all scattered, and if you die then it’s game over. Nice! Also you can still rest here to restore your health, but if you do it too many times the world will end. Damn, bummer.
We get our pawns back, including our main pawn who has turned back to normal. We need to go around and evacuate all the cities to a safe haven at the bottom of the ocean. Which is dry, because the water is gone.
There are crazy strong monsters everywhere, and you essentially have to go fight a series of bosses so that you can save the world.
Somewhere along the way we end up back at the massive statue that we had to chase down late in the main game. Our pawn ascends and fuses with the statue. They’re fighting a really big monster. They come back out of the statue. Zero explanation given.
We take all the things we collected from killing the bosses back to the dry ocean floor. We save the world. The game immediately forces you into New Game+.
The End.
>>>>>>>> END OF MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING <<<<<<<<
Best Gameplay 2024: Elden Ring Shadow of The Erdtree -
Souls combat still remains unmatched for me, and a whole slew of fun bosses to fight, new toys to play with, and a large and intricate area to explore. Was there ever any doubt that SoTE would be my favorite game to play this year? And that isn’t even getting into build crafting and the rabbit hole you can go down with that.I like to say I’ve spent as many hours researching and thinking about Elden Ring as I have actually playing the game. And Shadow of The Erdtree is no exception.
Best Boss Fight 2024: Messmer (Shadow of The Erdtree) -
Messmer to me is the perfect kind of fight. You have an extremely cool lore significant character. His throne room is a great arena to fight him in and his appearance is cool as all hell too. He’s tough enough to be considered a real challenge until you can learn the fight. His arsenal of attacks are wild and varied and they look incredible. The second phase is completely different and even more bonkers. And he has awesome cutscenes that play before the fight, and during the transition to phase 2. Hell of a fight.
Best Dragon 2024: Kazuma Kiryu (Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth) -
The legendary Dragon of Dojima still has some fight left in him, and somehow he looks even more handsome the older he gets? Kiryu’s portion in the story in Infinite Wealth served as a nice way to tie up loose ends, and to complete the baton pass to Ichiban Kasuga. I’ll always love you Kiryu!
That’s a wrap.
Well, that’s another massive list in the bag. Man, these things really take it out of me. I think more people used to read these, but that has just decreased over time. It doesn’t really matter though, I look forward to writing these lists every year. So even if I’m the only person who enjoys them, then that’s still worth it to me. Of course I’d love it if more people checked out all my hard work. And if that person is you: Hey, Thank you for reading. I’ll see y’all next year.
