The Nesta’s Games of the Year 2019 Edition
Hi friends, Joel here again. If you’ve ever read one of these things before, welcome back! If this is your first time, then I hope you enjoy elongated passionate rants about video games! Yes, it’s that special time of year again where I write entirely too many words about my favorite games of the year.
Looking back over the past few years, I see that I always start these things off with a pretty dire outlook on things. Usually some pretty heavy stuff going on in my life to go along with it. Then try to ease everyone into the praise parade.
So instead, let me try to keep things short and sweet this time.
2019, overall, was a pretty alright year for me. It definitely had some rough spots in there. My wife, Zara, I’m proud to say has effectively conquered her addiction. She’s been sober for almost an entire year now, I’m incredibly proud of her, and love her more than ever.
I’ve personally become even more independent this year, taking on a whole slew of new responsibilities, while at the same time miraculously spending most of my time with my wife, while still being able to sneak in some “me time” for things that she just isn’t interested in.
I even started trying to finally earn some money with my writing, as some of you might know already. I recently entered into the Medium Partnership Program and just very recently earned my first 5 cents (USD)! I’m incredibly proud and happy about those five cents!
On top of that, I’ve reached a new milestone as far as “views” go on something I wrote. If you haven’t read it yet, then might I point you towards my review of Kingdom Hearts III? Which I’m happy to announce here walked away with an award from me this year for “Most Disappointing Game of 2019”! Congratulations Kingdom Hearts for going from one of my favorite series of games I played last year to… this.
While I’m revisiting last year’s list, I’d also like to share with everyone that we finally know what was inside the Inside Collector’s Edition! And it’s just as fucked up as you might imagine! Cool!
So you see, not such a bad year. Yes, there are still a ton of extremely shitty things going on in the world as all times now, but at least we can be happy about things like wonderful spouses, reaching new goals, and realistic fuck toy collectibles!
Anyway, with that short update on things out of the way, let me jump right into “The Situation” for this year.
Last year’s Game of the Year List was a massive, ambitious undertaking that ended up turning into a massive wall of text that Medium estimates to take two hours on average to read. I don’t want that to happen anymore! So once again, I’m going to try making an honest effort to keep this list shot…er this year.
To help accomplish this, I’ve set a few guidelines for myself. 1, I’m not writing about 15 games this time. As much as I loved sharing my first year of gaming together with my wife, the circumstances are different this year, and I would like to focus on the standard top 10 list.. uh, +1. 2, I only have one “gimmick” this year and it’s a revision on my individual “awards”. To put it simply, each game on the list will have an award associated with it. I’ve tried to make the awards descriptive enough, while also being humorous in nature. So hopefully you enjoy them.
Finally, I’m going to cut down on the amount of media used in the post this year. As you can see, I have another awesome banner made by Zara again this year, but aside from that there will be a “cover” image for each game, and then only a handful of screenshots for most of them. Again, I enjoyed making all those stupid videos in Share Factory last year, but I honestly don’t think many people even watched them. But if you’d like to see them, go ahead and head over to my monstrous 2018 list. Yeah… they’re pretty dumb!
And that’s it! I finished the introduction in just a tiny bit over one page this year. Off to a good start! All that said, I hope you guys enjoy the list. I’m thankful to all the views I’ve gotten up to this point on everything I’ve written. Some things clearly more popular than others, but either way I still love sharing my thoughts with everyone. See you at the end!
Honorable Mention
0. SaGa: Scarlet Grace Ambitions
(2020’s 2019 Game of the Year): As much as it pains me to do this, I’ve decided to exclude SaGa: Scarlet Grace Ambitions from my actual Game of the Year List this year. The unfortunate truth is that the game just came out too late (December 3rd) for me to put enough time into it to really be able to accurately assess how I ultimately feel about it. That said, after 6 or so hours with the game I can safely say that this game is *easily* one of the best games of the year. And I’m going to try my damnedest to give the game its proper due on next year’s list. Hence the award!
Last year, my good friend Guan included SaGa: Scarlet Grace in his own game of the year list. It took the number 2 spot, only being beaten out by the likes of Utawarerumono (another game series that I really need to get around to finishing someday).
In his write-up, Guan says: “Throughout the years I’ve played a fair share of role-playing games and usually for the same reason: their stories. I love to learn about the characters I’m about to go on an adventure with and discover the world alongside them, as they fill me in on their backgrounds. I thought Bravely Default was the exception to this unwritten rule, where I be more engrossed into its combat system than its story, but when chapter 5 rolled around I realized that wasn’t the case.
No, SaGa: Scarlet Grace is that exception.”
What follows is a series of paragraphs in which my friend tries to describe the incredible depth and nuance of the game’s combat system. I can’t say I blame him, because if there’s one thing to take away from this game, it’s the combat.
Scarlet Grace truly does have one of the best turn-based JRPG combat systems of all time. It’s a game that somehow manages to make every battle feel engaging and rewarding. It’s a game that can be difficult if you want it to be (there are difficulty options) but can also offer the same kind of “highs” that one tends to get from games like Dark Souls, or Monster Hunter.
It’s unbelievable how effective the combat system in this game is at instilling those feelings of accomplishment. The very nature of the SaGa games is something that says “Fuck you” to the status quo, and as a result can be very hard to get into. The brilliance of Scarlet Grace is that it finally makes that stuff approachable by your average player.
I’ve included a recent tweet of mine showing off a situation that quite frankly just wouldn’t happen in most JRPGs, at least in a mechanical sense. Narrative is another matter.
But even that merits some further analysis, because somehow, someway, Scarlet Grace Ambitions has been graced with an extremely high quality localization from the folks at 8–4. And if you’ve ever read any of my GOTY lists for the past… decade, you’ll recognize that name as a seal of quality.
Scarlet Grace is more or less a budget title, coming out at $30 (with a generous launch discount on all platforms as of this writing). The game does a lot with a little though, and actually uses those shortcomings in its favor. The open ended, choose your own adventure nature of the game, combined with easy to pick up and play battles actually makes me think that this game is the perfected form of the Japanese trend of mobile RPGs, but without any hint of a gacha mechanic.
I really, really wish that I could tell you more about SaGa: Scarlet Grace Ambitions, but I just haven’t been able to put in enough time. So for now, it will have to settle for being a very strongly considered honorable mention. I’m telling you though, if you’ve ever enjoyed a JRPG, then you owe it to yourself to check this one out. We can find out just how amazing this game really is, together.
The List
10. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
(Best Publisher: Capcom): Our first game on the list has a special award associated with it. But I can’t go into that just yet. Trust me though.
What? An Expansion? Come on, Joel. You can’t be serious.
Oh, but I am.
Last year, Monster Hunter World did quite well on my game of the year list, claiming the number four spot on the list. It was my first real introduction to the “Monster Hunter” genre. You know, like how there are all those games “like Dark Souls”, but we still compare them to Dark Souls because that’s the one everyone’s familiar with? Yeah.
In last year’s write-up, I talked about how after many attempts I finally got Monster Hunter to “click” with me. And that I spent a good portion of the year coming back to the game to make a little more progress each time. I loved learning to play with all the different weapons. And the addicting loop of farming for parts to make your powerful (and stylish) new gear.
Monster Hunter World has continued to be a game I’ve gone back to many times in 2019 as well! When I started to hit a wall in the endgame, I discovered how great it is to tackle hunts in a group, even with a bunch of strangers — which is what I did most of the time. Learning to team up to take down the more difficult Elder Dragon enemies really pushed the game to new heights for me. And I’ve learned a lot about the game since then besides.
It even encouraged me to check out other Monster Hunter style games that released earlier in the year, including the free-to-play Dauntless. For the record, I enjoyed my time with Dauntless up to a point. Is it a shameless rip-off? Eh, kinda, yeah. But with the combination of it being free-to-play, and a little more laid back than Monster Hunter proper is, I definitely got the appeal of it. Ultimately the game suffers in the endgame where the difficulty spikes up to be more challenging than Monster Hunter World, but in entirely different ways. As well as the fact that the characters in that game are ugly as sin. Yuck.
Anyway, back to Monster Hunter World, or more accurately Iceborne.
Iceborne released in the latter half of this year, early September. Before then, I had a chance to check out a couple betas, and I was liking what I saw. So it was a no brainer for me to pick up the expansion pass on release day.
Unfortunately, as you might be able to ascertain by the game’s position on this list, it didn’t quite “hit” the same way Vanilla-World did.
Part of the reason for that, I feel, is that the introduction to the new Master Rank is very unkind to less experienced player’s like myself. Yes, there’s some great High Rank armor you can get easily enough to help smooth things over. Or you could even farm a set of early Master Rank armor just by farming a few nodes in a MR area. But even with those advantages, the early hours of Iceborne are rough.
It wasn’t so much that I was failing any of these hunts, but just the fact that it was taking me an entire hour to do each one. Granted I was flying solo again for a good while, which certainly didn’t help matters — the fact of the matter is I think it’s too steep of an increase.
As evident by the fact that the second half of the expansion’s story is significantly easier than the first half. While you could attribute that to me getting past a few walls with the help of a friend, or a group of strangers. Or the fact that I was just getting better at the game again. I think the real difference is just that the midtier gear is actually, you know, good, and not trash. But I digress.
I don’t want to make it seem like I didn’t enjoy a game on my list, even if it is in last place. Far from it, I think that overall I’ve had a great time with Iceborne. While it isn’t as special as my first brush with MonHun, it is a game that makes a number of improvements over the base game. There’s a boatload more content, and there’s more variety there this time. There’s a bunch of quality of life changes, and fun new features like a more robust system for customizing your room.
The game still suffers from the same faults World did, The story is awful (God, I really, really fucking hate ‘The Handler’), and getting into multiplayer hunts could still be a lot more straight forward. There’s also the huge gap in content releases between the console and PC versions of the game, something that they should have rectified with Iceborne — honestly.
Yet STILL, I would argue that Monster Hunter World remains one of the best “games-as-a-service” games out there. Capcom still pumps a ton of new, meaningful content into the game for free. There are still fantastic crossover events with other games (More Horizon, and Resident Evil 2 this time). It’s still a game that Is incredibly rewarding to boot up and knock out a few hunts on your never ending quest for loot. Which, speaking of which, there are some fabulous new armor sets in Iceborne.
Iceborne was one of the few multiplayer experiences I kept coming back to this year. And it’s sheer value of content cannot be overstated. If you’re looking for a game to sink thousands(!) of hours into — you could do a lot worse than Iceborne.
9. Devil May Cry 5
(Best Publisher: Capcom): Would you look at that? Another Capcom game has made it onto my game of the year list this year. Huh. However, I’ll have to ask that you remain patient, because I still can’t talk about this special award!
All of these thoughts runnin’ through my head. Arm on fire, veins burnin’ red. Frustration is gettin’ bigger. BANG BANG BANG — Pull My Devil Trigger!
Holy shit, Devil Trigger still slaps, huh? One of the first things we learned about Devil May Cry 5 was that it featured this awesome banger from Casey and Ali Edwards. Devil Trigger was basically the hype anthem for this game, and Capcom’s return to the stylish action genre couldn’t be burning any brighter if it tried.
Last year I wrote about how one of the game series that my wife and I played was the Devil May Cry series. We had a blast returning to (some of) those games. I also noted how tired I was of the beef between “DMC fans” and, well anyone who liked Ninja Theory’s DmC. For the record I’m a fan of both things!
The salty fans aren’t any less salty, but game director Hidekai Itsuno’s follow-up to the 11 year old Devil May Cry 4 turned out to be one of the best games in the entire series. Albeit with a few caveats.
DMC5 almost gets everything right — Is the action stylish? Yes. Are the characters hot? Yes. Does it have an awesome fucking soundtrack? Yes. That’s like.. basically all you need, right? Well in addition to all that, Devil May Cry 5 just so happens to run on the RE Engine which was used to make… another game this year. And holy shit, the game is fucking gorgeous. I think that without a doubt DMC5 was the game I liked to look at the most this year. That’s without a PS4 Pro, and an older 1080P TV. (I recently booted the game up again on my new 4K TV. I still can’t make use of most of the Pro’s features, -but- I can use HDR. That combined with the much better quality in screen? Godlike.)
I think the problem, then is that Devil May Cry 5 has one glaring weakness, and a couple of other nitpicks that admittedly when put together detracted a bit from my enjoyment of the game. The bigger issue is that the game’s levels and environments really, really suck. This isn’t so bad earlier on in the game, but eventually you find out that most of the game takes place in this very bland… hell tree… and all of it kind of bleeds together. It starts to make a lot of the game feel forgettable, which is sad, because I think there’s a really fun story here at its core. And the game certainly tries to make up for that with its charming dialogue and (did I mention attractive?) characters.
Another demerit to the game is more of a subjective one, but the game’s story really doesn’t take very long to complete. And while 9 times out of 10 I will swear by “shorter is better”, in this case we kind of just blazed through the game in like… four days? And then we were done. And if you’re not one of these people who are obsessed with replaying the combat over and over again, there’s not much reason to return for repeat playthroughs, at least right away. That combined with the bland areas that make up the majority of the game kind of left me second guessing myself when it came to putting it on the list.
But at the end of the day, I have to consider that Devil May Cry 5 was a pretty fantastic return to the series it was before DmC. The game has some of the best combat in the series, only falling short of reaching the heights that DMC3 did. And at the core of that are the three playable characters.
Nero makes a return from 4, where he was kind of, not the best — but this time he’s actually one of the highlights of the game. This new take on him manages to not only be a more endearing character this time around, but his special combat mechanic — the Devil Breaker — a series of extremely fragile prosthetic arms that range anywhere from an Egg Beater to the Mega Buster — are a blast to play around with. Plus he’s the one with that Devil Trigger song.
Dante of course makes a return again, but now he’s “Hot Grandpa” Dante. This new, more grizzled Dante still manages to hold onto the same charm we came to know and love him for (Just forget DMC2 ever existed). Sadly though, as robust as Dante’s arsenal of weapons is (One of the weapons is a transforming motorcycle for Christ’s sake!) I found him to be the least fun character to play.
So that leaves us with the enigmatic V, and oh boy, is he really one of the very best aspects of this game. You would think that with a series that is as well established as this one is, that any newcomer at this point would be perceived as a weak link (See: Nero in DMC4 again), and yet somehow V pretty much steals the show. Which is really impressive, because when they first revealed him I thought I was going to hate him.
V is a skinny goth kid who likes to recite a bunch of typically goth poetry any chance he gets. Which already sounds like bad news, but amazingly the game makes this work to dramatic effect! I think if the developers chose to write V in even a slightly different way he would become insufferable, but they fucking nail it here.
Part of the reason he’s so great is that he’s also by far the most interesting character of the bunch to play. V himself is only capable of dealing the finishing move with his cane. But to make up for that, he summons shadowy familiars that do all the fighting for him. Well, I mean, you’re doing the fighting, but, with them. And, well it’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s fucking awesome.
The true nature of V, and the gradual reveal of the true villain are what really save the game’s fun, but otherwise kind of forgettable story. Again, it’s not to say there aren’t plenty of great moments with the cast throughout, but I just feel like V makes everything that much more interesting.
There are several other things about the game that really sell me on it though. I love the dynamic music that kicks in the vocals when you start getting an “S” rank or higher during combat. Certain versions of the game come with these absolutely ridiculous live action cutscenes that were used to create the game’s actual cutscenes. And you have the option to enable those during your playthrough or watch them all after — and it is a god damn treat!
Sure, I might not know who Tony Redgrave is (I technically do know, but loosely… so work with me here), and I’m never going to even attempt to clear the Bloody Palace. Vergil DLC wasn’t the one thing I was the most excited (then disappointed not to) see at The Game Awards. And I think it’s bullshit that Capcom keeps egging on this feud between DMC fans and DmC fans. BUT — Devil May Cry 5 is still a badass game.
8. Pokemon Sword
(Best Birds): Birds, right? Is that really the only thing I could think to attribute an award to Pokemon Sword with? I mean, it’s like the 20th Pokemon game or some shit, so maybe. BUT! You would be sorely mistaken if you didn’t think I was deadly serious about my boys SirFetch’d and Corviknight. Who have become two of my all time favorite Pokemon now. Birdbros 4 life.
Over the years, I’ve put quite a few Pokemon games on my GOTY lists. I can’t help it, I grew up when Pokemon was right in my wheelhouse. It’s a deep seated love that I just so happen to share with most of my closest friends. It’s hard to deny Pokemon as a franchise. I recently learned that its essentially the biggest media franchise on Earth. How can you argue with that?
Well, “obnoxiously” and “constantly” as it turns out, if you took a look online this year to hear a bunch of immature brats screech about how awful Pokemon has become. Going as far as to threaten and harass people who worked on the game.
It was a sorry fucking sight indeed, as you couldn’t help but be exposed to the incredibly toxic “Dexit movement” for the majority of the year. So it does give me great pleasure knowing that SwSh are breaking all sorts of sales records. Eat a dick haters!
Anyway, moving on from that… Pokemon Sword might not be my favorite Pokemon game, in fact there are quite a few things I strongly dislike about it. But as it turns out it’s still a really fun time, and the further in my wife and I play it, there are more and more things to appreciate about it. Even if she isn’t entirely sold on it herself.
Pokemon Sword and Shield are, in fact, the first console mainline Pokemon games. And as such there were a lot of expectations placed upon it. Without going into my previous rant, I’ll say that my take on it is that SwSh is actually a pretty good execution on “Next Gen Pokemon”.
The game world feels large, and exciting. I think that the game visually looks great outside of the Wild Area — a new open world-ish area in the world that is home to most of the games new features — The game also hosts a ton of quality of life features that really help make the game feel like a modern take on the tried and true formula, and I think that what they’ve done with the Gyms in this game is really commendable.
The rest of the game can be a bit of a mixed bag though, for better or worse.
For starters, the very British setting of the Galar region maybe isn’t my favorite thing? I know that’s probably my big dissenting opinion about the game, but yeah — I don’t love it. The story as well, doesn’t do as much for me as some of the past games do. That’s not saying much though since most of the stories in Pokemon games aren’t much to write home about, but still it could be better.
The characters come in two varieties though. There are some really great characters in here with amazing designs. And then there are some real shit tier characters in here with atrocious designs. I should note that I haven’t finished the game yet (I have two Gym Badges left to get), but so far the characters that really stand out to me for one reason or another (in a positive way) are Nessa, Bea, Opal, Bede, and especially Marnie. While on the other side of that spectrum we have characters like Hop and Leon who are in-fucking-sufferable.
Hop has to be one of the worst rivals in the series, and anytime he’s on the screen (which is a lot early on in the game) the game becomes dramatically less enjoyable. Leon on the other hand isn’t the worst personality wise, but he looks fucking awful. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on awful character designs in the game. Milo, the first Gym Leader you fight is absolutely disgusting looking, and most, bordering on all generic NPCs look like hot fucking garbage.
This carries over to the Pokemon, but to a much lesser extent. Overall I’m not the biggest fan of this gen of Pokemon. A lot of them are either dumb looking, or worse. But there are however a decent number of really cool ones, like the aforementioned SirFetch’d, and Corviknight. As well as Hatterene, Wooloo, Cramorant, Frosmoth, and Indeedee, to name a few of my favorites.
I would argue though, that the best part of the entire game are the Gyms. While I’m not the biggest fan of the Sports Stadium motif (also it’s incredibly lame that you can buy and acquire other Pokemon Type Gym Uniforms, but inexplicably cannot use them for the actual Gyms??????) but the presentation of the whole thing more than makes up for it.
Yeah, you’re still doing puzzles in most of the Gyms before you get to the leader, but they feel more.. special this time? Even if some of them are no good, and in fact very bad (Looking at you Gordie).
But what really sets them apart are the battles against the Gym Leaders themselves. Everything looks, sounds, and feels so god damn cool. Each of the Gym Leaders having their own entrances and animations, and the fucking incredible battle music that plays. But the real star of the show is the whole Dynamaxing / Gigantamaxing concept.
For the past several ‘Gens’, GameFreak has toyed around with different gimmicks on the old Pokemon battle formula. First you had Mega Evolutions which were cool as shit, though maybe didn’t have the best execution when it came to actually using it in battles versus everything else. Then you had Z Moves, which, let’s be honest, fucking sucked.
Now we have Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing which essentially means, we make our Pokemon get really big. When I first saw this in the initial reveal trailer for the game early this year, I thought it was lame as hell. However once you see how they use it in the Gym Leader battles, you might change your mind. I certainly did.
They make the whole thing feel “epic”, and I don’t use the word lightly. It really does look exceedingly badass when you get to this point in every Gym Leader battle. By the point the music has changed, and you have these two gigantic beasts filling up the entire arena throwing amazing looking finishing moves back and fourth at each other.
It might be a pretty niche thing that doesn’t happen to often, and I can’t speak at all to how it works in the terrifying world of competitive Pokemon, but as far as feeling cool as fuck during the story? Awesome. So Awesome.
I could spend some time talking about the previously mentioned Wild Area. But why bother? Long story short, I think it’s a poor execution of an idea that’s kind of at odds with the rest of the game. The game looks and runs noticeably worse in that area (though I’m told if you’re online performance isn’t quite as bad). The Max Raids really aren’t… very good at all. And I found it far more frustrating to battle and capture wild Pokemon within the Wild Area. The idea sounded cool on paper, but I try to avoid going there if I can help it.
Overall, Pokemon Sword isn’t my favorite Pokemon game. I don’t even know if it would make top 5 when you consider the various iterations of each gen. But for what it’s worth, I’m having a great time with it, and enjoy the good parts about it. Especially being able to share it with my wife.
7. God Eater 3
(Best Monster Hunter): Remember what I said earlier about referring to a whole genre as the game that pretty much defined that genre in the first place? Sure, I’ve heard some people refer to them as “Hunting” games in the past. But considering there were three of these types of games released this year (that I know of) between Dauntless, Iceborne, and God Eater 3… I find it a little more impactful to say that God Eater 3 was my favorite Monster Hunter game I played this year. Because it’s true.
A long time ago, Sony used to believe that it could compete with Nintendo in the handheld market. Thus, the PSP was born. And unlike, let’s say, it’s “successor”, the Vita — Sony actually found a decent amount of success with the PSP. Part of the reason for that was because of Monster Hunter, for Japan at least.
Monster Hunter’s success on the platform inevitably led to other companies wanting to get in on that MonHun cash cow Capcom had going for them. One such game was the original God Eater. I remember trying to play that back in the day too, and while it seemed a little more approachable than Capcom’s premier series, it didn’t really grab me either.
Many years later I tried God Eater 2 when it came out in the west. And it almost clicked with me that time (by this time I was already down the Soulslike well, so it was only a matter of time), but ultimately the lack of presentation (It was a PS4 game that was ported from Vita, and for some reason the voice audio quality (not the acting quality per se, but eh…) was horrendous. And on top of that there were a lot of batshit crazy mechanics in the game like bullet crafting that were far too intimidating.
So fast forward to sometime last year, after I fell in love with Monster Hunter World. And after I was already interested in the God Eater team’s next game Code Vein… when I saw they were making God Eater 3 it solidified a spot on my radar. A PS4 game first and foremost, and with some MonHun experience behind me I thought for sure this would be the time.
I was right.
So, clearly I enjoyed the game. But what makes me like God Eater 3 more than Iceborne? I feel like this is pretty easy to answer, because the reason I like this game is for all the things it specifically does differently than Monster Hunter.
Note, I haven’t said God Eater 3 is a better game than Monster Hunter World. I don’t actually believe that. But did I find more enjoyment during my time with God Eater 3 than Iceborne this year? Very much so.
At their core, both of these franchises are very similar. Monster Hunter is a game about hunting difficult monsters in a boss gauntlet like fashion, collecting parts from those monsters, and using it to craft all your gear.
Looking at God Eater, it’s a game where you hunt difficult, um, gods, in a boss gauntlet like fashion, collecting parts from those… gods… and using it to craft all your gear.
Fundamentally the same game. But it’s where they differ that’s interesting.
Monster Hunter is a game that’s all about the thrill of the hunt. In comparison its combat has far more depth than God Eater. Each one of the weapons in Monster Hunter plays like a different character in a fighting game, perhaps you’ve heard that analogy before? It’s true! And mastering those weapons is a big part of Monster Hunter. In addition to that, the game has a bunch of different systems in place that you need to keep in mind during a hunt.
Granted, World changed a lot of those things with its QoL features. You’re still expected to eat food, craft items, sharpen your weapon, use traps, so on and so fourth. But… there is very little emphasis on story in these games from what I can tell. And the game is generally geared more towards multiplayer to make the most out of it.
Some of these elements exist in God Eater, but to a lesser degree. In God Eater 3, I never worried too much about crafting, or item management. I just bought what I needed in terms of restoratives, and that was about it. There’s no need to sharpen weapons, none of the fights I did really required much other than just fighting with your weapons. However, God Eater is much, much, much more focused on story, in a more traditional JRPG sense. With tons of cutscenes, characters who actually feel like real characters, and even AI party members that go with you on every mission.
It’s at that point that I think while these two franchises share similar DNA, they’re both going for different things. And while Monster Hunter can be appreciated as a sort of discipline to master. God Eater is way more laid back, and about having a good time while anime happens around you at all times.
And I love it for that.
With all that said. I love God Eater 3’s style. I think most of the character designs range from really good, to great. I love the way my character looks in that game, who once again is inspired by my wife Zara. And I actually legitimately like these characters, and the game’s story. It’s a typical anime story, it’s not out here breaking any new ground or anything, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun with plenty of over-the-top action, and even some genuinely touching moments.
God Eater 3 is much more of a single player game than Monster Hunter generally is. Aside from managing your own character, you get to decide how to train up your party members to best suit your needs. I will say that for the most part, every character should just learn the same really useful skills, and never really change them. But maybe there’s some point in the DLC where that becomes… more of a thing. But I never got to that point in the main game.
Another thing I really like about God Eater 3 over Monster Hunter is how it handles fashion. Yes, it’s cooler that you actually craft armor that looks like the monsters you hunt in Monster Hunter, but that can often times leave your character looking like a fucking clown. I realize that Capcom is trying to fix that somewhat with the revamped layered armor system in Iceborne, but it’s needlessly difficult to unlock the different cosmetic armors.
In God Eater, you’re character’s clothes have nothing to do with your equipment, so you’re free to make yourself look however you like. And there are some really great options in there. I had a great time unlocking new clothes and asking my wife to help dress up my character.
Not everything is perfect in God Eater 3 though. There are still complex systems like bullet crafting in place that aren’t any easier to understand, but for better or worse they also don’t really seem… important at all? I just used stock ammo for the entire game no problem.
Another thing is that even though the combat is much more “action-y” intentionally, it still feels unrefined when compares to Monster Hunter. Unrefined, yes. But still very, very fun. It’s also worth pointing out that for as generous as Capcom has been with dishing out free Monster Hunter World content, I think God Eater 3 might have it beat. Since I finished the game early this year, I think they’ve added literally hundreds of new missions. With new story, new modes, new characters, new clothes, new equipment. Just, a whole lot of everything. All for free. I originally rented the game when I played it early this year, but just recently bought the game on PSN for like $20 or some shit. That’s an insane value right there.
Last thing I’ll say about God Eater 3 is that the game ends spectacularly. The final boss is crazy, amazing shit is happening in the story, and I even got a little choked up when the game does one of my favorite things — making your previously silent for the entire game character talk to deliver some badass, emotional, motivation speech. It fucking rules so hard.
Man, God Eater 3 is good.
6. AI: The Somnium Files
(Best Eye Trauma): or, Best Game Where You Solve A Murder Mystery About A Serial Killer Who Goes Around Removing People’s Eyes Out, or, God Damn, Judgment Was Another Game In A Series Of Disappointing Games For Me This Year :(
I’ll never get tired of the Bromance between Spike Chunsoft alumni Kotaro Uchikoshi and Kazutaka Kodaka. Uchikoshi of course being the director of The Zero Escape series of games, and Kodaka being the brains behind the Danganronpa series.
Both of them left Spike Chunsoft to form a new studio called Too Kyo Games, but in what is perhaps the final swan song for their era within Spike Chunsoft, the company published another game directed by Uchikoshi known as AI: The Somnium Files.
I remember when this game got announced I was deeply interested in what these two would do next. Considering that both Danganronpa and the Zero Escape games are among my favorite visual novels. And yes, I know I need to play Ever17. I know.
For whatever reason though, I didn’t keep close tabs on AI. I wasn’t even aware that the character designer for the game was none other than Yusuke Kozaki who is responsible for some of the best Fire Emblem character designs in the series. I didn’t know what any of the characters looked like, or what the game was even about until it came out.
That’s admittedly pretty weird, and I don’t fully understand it myself. The only thing I can figure is just that news about AI was simply buried by everything else that has been coming out these past couple years.
Once the game was out though, I kind of mentally marked it down as “I need to play this sometime”, but then moved on. It wasn’t until I started seeing reviews like the one from Heidi Kemps over at GameSpot where I started to think “Oh, I guess I should play this sooner, rather than later.”
So I ended up picking up a copy on Steam, and the first night I played it, I fell in love. I’m, vaguely aware that Uchikoshi has done stuff like Punchline, but my only real exposure to his work is Zero Escape. Which, to be fair does have its own sense of humor, but is usually pretty fucked up.
(I should note here that the PC port of the game is terribly fucking broken and prone to crashing constantly. To the point that I actually bought the game again on PS4 to avoid the hassle.)
So I was really thrown for a loop when I started to read the writing in AI. It was… hilarious? Like, maybe the hardest I’ve laughed at a video game? Or at least up there with other stuff that I can’t remember (that was intentionally trying to be funny, let’s be clear here.)
Right away I warmed up to the central characters, who look a little more like Kozaki’s outlandish No More Heroes designs than his Fire Emblem characters. Their personalities were instantly endearing. The localization was also fantastic, and they really got together an incredibly talented set of voice actors to take on these roles. The lead character Date, being voiced by Greg Chun who…. uh… wait…
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait….
ARE YOU FUCKING TELLING ME GREG CHUN VOICED THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THE OTHER EYE TRAUMA GAME THIS YEAR TOO? WHAT THE FUCK???? I AM LITERALLY PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER WHILE WRITING THIS WHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTT????
Holy Shit…
I just…
Wow…
Okay. Um. Greg seems like an incredibly cool and talented dude. Keep it up!
Alright, so, uh… AI is an incredibly funny game, and it’s clear that Uchikoshi wanted to flex his comedy muscles with this game. That isn’t to say this game doesn’t get fucked up, because spoilers: it does. Well, is that really even a spoiler? The first thing you see in this game is a lady riding a horse on a merry-go-round in an abandoned amusement park who has her fucking eye carved out. Hell of an opening!
The main hook of AI is that the story, as well as the game itself delve into dreams. The player character, Date is part of a secret force within the police department that uses a special kind of machine to ‘psync’ with people and allow the ‘psyncer’ to explore another person’s somnium in order to find clues within the dream that they wouldn’t be able to obtain otherwise.
This game is totally a near future sci-fi game, so if that kind of thing turns you off, maybe not for you. But also, if you’re especially squeamish about people’s eyeballs being mutilated then the game might also not be for you. Or also if you find perverted humor really grating (for some reason, don’t ask me) then the game might also not be for you…
Also I guess I should point out that exploring the Somniums, aka the most “gameplay” portion of the game is actually easily the worst part of the game? It’s usually nothing too off-putting, but the game enforces a strict time limit of 6 minutes to explore each Somnium, and it quickly becomes a puzzle game of sorts where you have to manage your time while also solving traditional adventure game puzzles. So, yeah… it’s not going to be for everyone.
However! I can tell you that the most important part of the game, that is the story, characters, and writing are all superb. I obviously don’t want to spoil too much of the game here, but one of the trademarks of Uchikoshi’s past games, and indeed this one, are that you’ll reach a “bad end” or “dead end” decently quickly in your playthrough. Bad Ends shouldn’t be anything new to VN fans, but they’re pretty self explanatory even if that doesn’t describe you.
The dead ends however are when you hit a wall in that “route”. Thus forcing you to start at a different point in the game’s “flowchart” and take a different route through the game in the hopes of getting the next ending that will open up other routes.
If you’ve played any of the Zero Escape games, this isn’t news to you. You already know what to expect. For everyone else, without saying too much, this all fits into the actual narrative of the game, and by the end of the game you will understand most, if not all of what the fuck is going on.
Which is good! Because the game throws a lot of curve balls at you. There are tons of twist and turns in the mystery. And like any good Uchikoshi game, the story is constantly revealing things to you that you won’t even know are relevant until much later in the playthrough. And when you connect the dots? That’s when the magic happens.
All that said, I don’t know that I can say I like AI the most out of the Uchikoshi games. It’s definitely 100% better than Zero Time Dilemma, but I don’t think it even comes close to Virtue’s Last Reward. 999 is debatable. And I say that because it was my first time playing one of his games, and it blew my fucking mind. But I bet if I went back to it, it might not hold up as well compared to AI.
Plus, even though I love all the mind fuckery, and tragic story lines. There’s still something to be said for a game that can make you laugh, and have a good time. I love when something can strike a good balance between the two, and I think AI does it perfectly.
5. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
(Best Metroidvania): In a world where every other indie game that makes its way to market is some sort of twist on the Metroidvania format, yet none of them quite manage to capture that same feeling you had playing a Castlevania or Metroid game years ago, it was very refreshing for Bloodstained to come out and not only deliver the best Metroidvania experience in years, but to also be one of the best games in the entire Where The Fuck Do I Go genre.
To say that it’s a miracle that Bloodstained turned out as good as it did is putting it lightly. Koji Igarashi’s return to the post-Symphony of the Night era of Castlevania games was originally announced as a Kickstarter way back on May 11th, 2015. Back when people still had hope Mighty №9 would deliver on the promise of a good Mega Man successor. Considering how poorly that game was received, combined with the various setbacks, delays, and other development woes Bloodstained went through, it was easy to think that this spiritual successor would suffer the same fate as well.
However, against all odds, Iga, and the teams at Art Play, Inti Creates… WayForward, and uh, 505 Games finally managed to put out what I strongly consider to be one of the best games in the genre, and a true return to form for Iga’s spin on the Castlevania series.
I think the thing that works so well about Bloodstained is that it actually feels like it could have come out alongside games like Symphony of the Night, or the GBA and DS Castlevania games. Despite being a new IP, everything is how you remember it. From the way it controls, to the numerous Easter Eggs and (not-so-subtle) nods to the games that came before it.
Speaking of which, Iga and the team weren’t afraid to have fun with this game. Castlevania was never the most serious franchise out there (Unless we’re talking about Lords of Shadow, which I would really rather not) but Bloodstained pushes things even further.
Examples of this include things like the lady who gives you the monster slaying missions. Who delivers the same exact voice line of “Help me avenge the death of [Insert Name of Castlevania Character Here]. Kill them dead!” every time, and it’s never not funny. There are plenty of other references in here too, though none of them are as blatant as the character O.D., who is essentially a pallet swap of Symphony of the Night protagonist Alucard, who you meet sitting in a chair perched precariously over a hole in the ground, in a library. Yeah.
There are also a weird amount of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure references in here? Like the Stone Mask headgear, the previously mentioned O.D. having the ability to stop time like THE WORLD, and even the fact that you can stop at any point while playing and make Miriam do JoJo poses? It’s great!
That said, the game’s narrative might in fact suffer due to the game’s more comical nature, seeing as though even after playing and enjoying last year’s Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon — a 8-Bit inspired throwback to the original Castlevania games that shares character and story ties to Ritual of the Night — I can’t say that I cared too much about what was going on in this game’s story at any given time. With the only characters of note being the previously mentioned O.D., Zangetsu the demon slayer (voiced by David Hayter of Solid Snake fame), and the game’s lead heroine Miriam.
I’m willing to let all that slide though, because Miriam by herself is one of the best parts of the game. I fell in love with her design the very first day the Kickstarter was announced. And there sadly isn’t enough fanart of her, though from what little there is, there are some extremely good pictures.
Design aside, Miriam is an excellent lead for the game. She’s strong, sexy, and badass. I think that her voice actress, Erica Lindbeck, does a fantastic job getting the appeal of the character across within the confines of the limited script she has to work with.
If you’ve ever played a Metroidvania style game before, you largely know what to expect here. Especially if you’ve played Symphony of the Night. Bloodstained is a 2D styled side-scrolling platformer that puts an emphasis on combat and exploration. Throughout the course of the game you’ll explore a typically Castlevania style castle. Searching each and every corner of your in-game map to try and uncover any loot or secrets. In true Metroidvania fashion you’ll unlock new traversal abilities as you progress that will allow you to double back to previously visited areas to unlock new ways of moving forward.
That’s the gist of it, though it’s worth noting that Iga’s brand of Castlevania is one that applies elements found in many RPG games like leveling, stats, and equipment as means of advancing your character. There are even more specific nods to Symphony of the Night in here, like the ability to summon a familiar companion, or even the hidden fighting game input style combat techniques.
To that end, Bloodstained isn’t doing anything particularly new in the genre, but I think the more important takeaway from this game for me was just how good it felt to be playing a game like this again. I was fully invested in exploring every inch of the map in Ritual of the Night, and I had a damn good time doing so. There are some pretty great (and silly) enemy designs in here. And the little additional features like being able to customize how your Miriam looks, or the weirdly fleshed out cooking mini-game come together to make a game that feels more than a lot of similarly inspired games have done in the years since those older games.
I feel like a lot of games nowadays tend to have a deeper meaning for the people who play them. Maybe the story really left an impression with you, or it’s a means of getting together with other people and forming bonds with them. Bloodstained is a game that I enjoyed for its simple adherence to a type of game I used to love, and I had a really good time with it. And sometimes that’s all we need a game to be.
I hope that this game has proven successful enough for Iga to give it another shot. I would love to see a follow-up to Bloodstained, or even another game that still has the familiar trappings we’ve come to expect from this genre. I just hope that we don’t have to go through another cycle of development hell to get there.
4. Resident Evil 2 (REMAKE / 2019)
(Best Publisher: Capcom:) The moment you (probably haven’t) been waiting for is finally here! Full circle, baby! I think you can probably guess the nature of this award and why it was awarded this year. But read on to find out more…
Resident Evil’s back, baby!
Back during the heyday period of the original PlayStation, one of the bigger names during that generation was Resident Evil, or Biohazard as it was known in Japan, or Resi if you’re a weirdo. The original Resident Evil is a classic in its own right, but it was really Resident Evil 2 that I think helped introduce a larger audience to the survival horror genre, myself included.
It’s hard to remember how exactly I came to terms with the game’s awkward “tank controls”, or got over the fact that it was terrifying the first dozen times I played the game until I eventually learned how to speedrun it in under two hours (more on that later). But Resident Evil 2 is still one of my favorite games from the original PlayStation, which is impressive considering the number of classic JRPGs that keep it company in my mind.
There was just something really alluring about the sense of discovery in that game. As you explored this zombie infested police station to find an increasingly strange series of items to use to solve these inane puzzles. There’s an “in-fiction” justification for why the RPD Police Station required you to use several different animal medallions to unlock the route forward (It used to be a museum, I guess? I still don’t know if that explains it…)
The tension from always having to worry about your limited inventory space, and figuring out how to smartly use your limited resources of ammunition, or restoratives to heal yourself, was as stressful as it was thrilling. Each new enemy you encounter sporting some sort of fucked up design. And the ridiculously over-the-top voice acting that really brought the game’s iconic characters and absurd story to life.
This game, and I feel like the first game to a somewhat lesser extent helped make names like Rookie Cop Leon S. Kennedy, and Claire Redfield household names. Resident Evil went on to be an incredibly successful series for Capcom, and I enjoyed most of the mainline games up to a point. But things got pretty weird for a while there, and the series kind of lost its way… until recently.
Last E3 Capcom really wowed everyone between the announcement of both Devil May Cry 5, and Resident Evil 2 REmake. The remake had technically been implied several years earlier by RE2R’s producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, in a video where he excitedly informed everyone that a remake had been approved and was in development, ending the video with the endlessly endearing phrase “We Do It”.
When I first saw the E3 trailer live during that awkward Sony conference alongside my wife, it was one of the highlights of the event for us. We both had an admiration for the series dating way back to some of the oldest entries in the franchise. Though both of us admittedly being lapsed fans.
I spent the remainder of 2018 kind of hemming and hawing about how excited I was to play the remake. On one hand, I really loved that original game. On the other, I’ve become quite the scaredy cat in recent years, and the game looked absolutely terrifying. It wasn’t until I got my hands on the time limited demo in the first half of January of this year that I finally made up my mind. And that was…
Yes. Oh God, yes. I’m pre-ordering this game right the fuck now.
Similar to Bloodstained in a way, I think what made me enjoy REmake so much was that it recaptured what it felt like to play a survival horror game back in the day. However the thing that sets these two games apart is that REmake really does a lot to modernize that original concept, while still remaining extremely faithful to it.
Despite the switch to a behind the back perspective, or the fact that the game is built from the ground up to be an entirely new game, there’s still a certain sense of nostalgia while playing Resident Evil 2 REmake. The game is also smart about using that nostalgia to its advantage to throw off returning players from the original and surprise them in interesting ways.
The RE Engine works wonders here too, as it does with Devil May Cry 5, and Resident Evil 7 before it. Everything about the game looks spectacular, whether it be the highly detailed recreations of past environments, or the game’s disturbing-to-look-at cast of monstrosities. But I think it’s the new take on fan favorite characters that offer the most striking impression.
Admittedly I wasn’t sold on the new Leon and Claire from the outset, but after spending a short amount of time playing the game I learned to accept them the same way I did the original duo. And once that hurdle was dealt with, I was free to admire just how god damn good, and expressive the character’s faces looked.
One of the redesigns I was immediately sold on however was Ada Wong, Resident Evil’s… resident woman of mystery. There was always something appealing about Ada, but I always held a candle for Claire back in the day. I have to say I’ve changed my mind on that matter, because god damn, they made Ada look fucking good.
But there’s another character in the game, and he’s arguably the most important one. The infamous Mr. X, whom I’m sure you’re all familiar with now that he’s obtained a level of meme status that ensures you know who he is, and what the fuck he’s all about even if you’ve never played a Resident Evil game.
Not only is Mr. X one of the most terrifying elements of any game I’ve ever played, he’s also an integral part as to why I think the remake of Resident Evil 2 surpasses the original. Lest I be corrected, yes, Mr. X is indeed in the original game. But he’s exclusive to the “B” route. And even then his presence isn’t nearly as pronounced or pivotal in the original. Instead they decided to do that with Nemesis in the third game, which is why I’m already filled with equal amounts of dread and anticipation for when the remake of 3 comes out.
That feeling of tension that originally defined the survival horror genre is back in this game, but with all the horsepower afforded my modern hardware and a much bigger emphasis on Mr. X as a constant threat during both playthroughs of the game is what really pushes this game to new heights.
Another thing I want to point at as an incredibly simple, yet effective form of game design, and that is the game’s map system. It’s one of the best maps I’ve seen used in a video game, and one of the biggest reasons that I think this modern take on classic survival horror works so well. There’s never a point in REmake where you don’t know where you’ve been as the game is constantly keeping track of previously explored areas, right down to the keys you need to open locked doors, or items you might have left behind.
Like I said, it’s a simple enough sounding thing on paper, but so many games are so bad at doing good maps that I really don’t think the greatness of this one can be overstated.
I also think its commendable that even so many years removed from that original game, the remake nails the exact right tone and feel to the game’s narrative and atmosphere. Resident Evil can be very silly at times, but it’s still horror at the end of the day, and walking that line was something I felt the later games did less than great at.
I guess now is as good a time as any to explain that two hour speedrun, huh?
Well, back in the day there was a notorious April Fool’s joke published in popular gaming magazine (It was like a website but printed out on paper and stapled together, for all you zoomers out there), EGM that claimed you could allegedly unlock Street Fighter’s Akuma as a playable character if you finished the game under some arbitrary requirements.
And so I… well, you probably get the picture. In my defense, I was a gullible child (they had a screenshot and everything! It had to be real!) with a lot of time on my hands, I really loved the game, and yo, they said Akuma could do a fucking Hadouken! Of course I was up for the challenge!
It wasn’t meant to be.
It’s been one hell of a year for Capcom, and this is back-to-back with 2018 which introduced a much larger audience in the world to Monster Hunter, and even managing to get out what sounds like a pretty great Mega Man game. The trifecta of Resident Evil 2 REmake, Devil May Cry 5, and Monster Hunter World: Iceborne make up one of the strongest showings by a single publisher within a single year’s time that I can remember. And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down in the slightest. Next year we have Resident Evil 3 REmake to look forward to already. But who knows after that?
Capcom was one of the biggest names back in the day, but they kind of lost their way during the 360/PS3 generation, the same way most Japanese developers did. I believe that modern Capcom is capable of doing anything they want to. I have to imagine they will capitalize on Monster Hunter’s continued new found popularity with a World 2, or some such. They should make more Devil May Cry games. Another Mega Man game. Hell, they should try to win back their fighting game crown from Bandai Namco’s literal Iron Fist on the scene right now. Maybe with an amazing looking new Darkstalkers game? (wink wink)
As for Resident Evil, where do they go after 3? I could see them giving the REmaster treatment to Code Veronica, though I have to imagine the remake would have to work miracles to make the likes of Steve Fucking Burnside a remotely likable character. Or I could see them starting development on a proper Resident Evil 8, and hopefully they disregard everything about 7 other than the RE Engine?
Either way, I’m excited as fuck to see what happens next. And you should be too.
3. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
(Best Community): Anyone who knows me shouldn’t be surprised to see a Fire Emblem game on my list. And thankfully I’m not going to regale you with another history lesson since it’s well tread territory for me by this point. But when coming up with an award for Three Houses, I thought that it would be cool to emphasis the community of Fire Emblem fans, not just those who are fans of this particular game, but the entire fandom as a whole. This year we saw quite a few of the talented English voice actors from Three Houses jump into the fandom head first, and join in on the memes and love the community has for it. This extends to fans who have been in the series since early on, or from Awakening, or even those whose first Fire Emblem game was in fact Three Houses.
I don’t typically associate myself with what would be considered a “fandom”, but if there is one for me, it’s definitely Fire Emblem. I’ve watched this series go from niche franchise that used to be exclusive to Japan, to a commercial flop that threatened to end the series as a whole, to a new generation of fans falling in love for the first time and helping make this one of Nintendo’s biggest, and most important franchises. And for that, I really can’t say enough nice things to the wonderful people who make up this community. With copious amounts of fanart, crafts, writing, videos, anything you can imagine coming out in droves every single day from so many talented and impassioned individuals. Honestly, just thank you all for saving Fire Emblem.
Three Houses had an interesting development cycle. It was originally intended to be another 3DS title for the series, but was later scrapped in favor of the remake of the second Fire Emblem game, Gaiden, called Echoes. The idea for the game resurfaced later with the announcement of the Switch, and a development team at Koei Tecmo took on the brunt of development to make Three Houses truly feel like a new flagship entry in the Fire Emblem series.
Following the tease of the game in an early Fire Emblem themed Nintendo Direct in early 2017, we didn’t actually hear anything about Three Houses until E3 2018 when the game was revealed to the world as Fire Emblem Three Houses. All the way up to the release of the game, I think you had people within and outside of the fandom wondering exactly what Three Houses was going to be.
The new character designs proved to be unpopular by a fair amount of people in the beginning, and the game’s similarities to the Persona series also earned it some ire among fans who had come to expect a more tactical and war torn story from Fire Emblem.
It wasn’t until this year’s E3, when Nintendo dropped an incredibly interesting trailer for the game that revealed there would be a time skip of sort that would re-frame the game in a much darker tone. The time skip itself also drew comparisons to the Japanese exclusive Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War, which is regarded as a high point in the series among the fans who have been lucky enough to play it.
With fans largely back on board, and a larger excitement building around newcomers to the series, the stage was set for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. And as I’m sure you’re all aware by now, it turned out quite well for Nintendo. Seeing as how Three Houses has become a critical and commercial success. Not only setting new sales records for the series, but even being awarded in the traditionally western centric The Game Awards.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses is without a doubt one of this year’s biggest and best games, but how do I feel about it now as a Fire Emblem fanatic, and also as someone who has only completed one of the game’s multiple routes?
Three Houses is a beast of a game that can easily run you a couple hundred hours of game time if you’re dedicated to see everything the game has to offer. Which is something I would have liked to have done by the time I wrote this list, but sadly it just wasn’t in the cards. There were too many real life commitments, as well as a never ending stream of new video games to check out and play. But both my wife and I had an amazing time playing through the Blue Lion’s route.
For better or worse, Three Houses is a game that pushes the boundaries of what we’ve typically come to expect from a Fire Emblem game. It’s less tactical in nature, with a much stronger emphasis on RPG like stats and customization than any past game has offered. The battles are also considerably less strategic in nature, often only requiring a stronger team of allies to steamroll over, as a majority of the game is exceedingly easy on the Normal (and even Hard) difficulties up until the latter part of the game, where it arguably sees too much of a difficulty spike for its own good.
The nature of difficulty balance in the Fire Emblem series has ever been a perilous one. I personally feel a game like Echoes offered the perfect blend of strategic options versus modest challenge. Where as games that some fans like to praise for their difficult, ala the Conquest campaign in Fates, feel far too punishing. And past attempts at creating an easier experience have given us things like the Birthright campaign for Fates, that feels largely uninteresting and brain dead simple.
Sadly there are still some other aspects about the combat that lessen the experience. The inclusion of larger than life boss monsters, while cool on paper, is executed pretty poorly here. Most of them making up some of the less interesting fights in the game. And other systems like the Gambit system being poorly utilized, at least in terms of a standard playthrough.
The fact that Three House’s approach to battle being more in line with a traditional JRPG, as well as its tendency to recycle and reuse the same boring maps ad nauseam left me feeling cold about the game’s combat overall.
Which is a shame considering the game has an incredibly robust system for you to train up and customize your army. A majority of the recruitable party members are your students, so the nature of teacher and student not only supports the game’s setting, but also makes for a really fun way to shape your units into the unstoppable killing machines they were meant to be.
The game at least offers some guidance in how you could raise your students. That is to say someone who starts out as a swordsmen, will very likely make a good Sword Master at the end of the day. But the game also allows plenty of room for the player to go against the grain. As it turns out, that very same swordsmen can make an exceptionally proficient mage. And I think that level of customization goes along way to making the game’s inherent multiple playthroughs feel more unique than they would have otherwise.
Overall though, I cannot recommend Three Houses to a Fire Emblem fan who is looking for the same rewarding tactics based combat you might have come to expect out of the series. The good news though, is that almost literally everything else about the game is fantastic. And it’s easy to see why people who weren’t going to be as invested in the combat in the first place, came away thinking that this is the best Fire Emblem has ever been. And I think there’s certainly a strong argument to be made there, even if I, myself, don’t believe that to be the case.
Fire Emblem is not typically a series known for having incredible storytelling. I feel that most of the games in the series have a pretty decent narrative to guide you from battle to battle. With the outliers being the Jugdral games (Genealogy and Thracia) and the Tellius games (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn) who both pairings of games combined to tell a single narrative rich story that had the series punching above its weight with regards to storytelling chops.
I think it’s safe to add Three Houses to the list of Fire Emblem games with an exceptional story, as even though I’ve only completed one route in the game, that by itself was impressive enough. But taking what I’ve heard of the other routes into consideration, it becomes clear that Three Houses is able to spin a equally fitting yarn to match up the size and scope of the game.
I think the number one reason the game works as well as it does in this regard is thanks in large part to its ensemble of amazing, and endearing characters. As I said, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the character designs going into the game, but once I got to spend some serious time with this cast, I was easily able to look past that and learn to love almost everyone here. And I know my wife, and many of my friends who have played the game feel the same way.
The nature of each route will naturally have you spending more time with students from your selected house, but the game allows for you to recruit almost every obtainable character in the game in any single playthrough, if you’re determined enough. This becomes easier to accomplish on NG+ mode, which is another notable positive quality to the game, as repeat playthrough of Three Houses become quite a bit more manageable thanks to the benefits of NG+.
Of course there are characters within each route that are central to the story, and it’s easy to get a feel for them. But it’s when you delve into the game’s Support Conversations — a returning staple of the series — that you really start to see who everyone really is.
The writing of most of the support conversations is great to fantastic at least. Many of them expanding on a character’s backstory in some pretty significant ways that you wouldn’t see otherwise. While other ones just provide you with an excuse to see these characters in amusing situations. This is what originally made Awakening resonate so much with people. And I’m glad to see that Three Houses has gotten things back on track in that regard.
SPOILER WARNING: To my surprise, I’ve been pretty light on spoilers this year. But I just wanted to toss a spoiler warning out there before you decide to read this next part. There will be light to medium spoilers for the Blue Lions route, and some spoilers that have to do with some of the characters. I wouldn’t personally consider anything in here to be an outright major spoiler, but view at your own discretion.
In my mind, the core of the Blue Lion’s route is about Dimitri’s character arc. And it’s a pretty incredible character arc at that.
Dimitri was an early favorite in this household, and the main reason we picked the Blue Lions was because my wife loved him from the get-go. I say that the Blue Lion’s route is mainly about Dimitri’s character arc, and I don’t think that’s far off the mark. But it’s also a story that at least to some extent tackles racism as major point of conflict for the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.
Dimitri’s arc follows a man who is tormented by the ghosts of past trauma that drive him to the point of insanity, and you spend a decent portion of the campaign trying to restore his shattered mind. Another key figure in the Blue Lion’s story is Dimitri’s close friend and bodyguard Dedue. Dedue is a very complex character to grasp at first, but seeing how strong the bonds between him and Dimitri are, as well as some truly fantastic supports with some of the other students, it’s easy to love Dedue, and feel extremely bad about all the fucked up stuff he’s had to endure.
The relationship that Dimitri has with the Black Eagle’s house leader, Edelgard, offers a more personal investment aside from the time skip seeing the three nations at war with each other. The portrayal of Edelgard’s character in this route is so powerfully off putting that both my wife and I kind of hate her as it stands currently. Which is a stark contrast to a majority of the fans thinking she’s one of, if not the best character in the game. And I think that if the game truly is capable of offering such a vastly different insight into her character within her own route that you come to sympathize, and perhaps even love her? Then I think that’s pretty amazing.
I’ve obviously spent the most amount of time with the other Blue Lion students. Of them I really love Felix, and Ingrid the most. Felix being a character who I hated at first, but learned to love his tsundere nature. Ingrid, while not having the most interesting backstory, has a great character design, and is easily one of the best units in the game.
Other notable members of that house are Sylvain and Ashe. Sylvain was an early favorite until we dug more into his supports. Disappointingly, I found him to be a pretty shallow character who’s supposed motivations didn’t do much to sell me on his plight. That said he has some amazing supports, with the ones between his childhood friends Felix and Ingrid being some of the better ones in the game as a whole.
Ashe on the other hand is a more well rounded character. Totally likable dude, but he doesn’t do much to stand out, which can be taken as either a good thing or a bad thing. Lastly for the Blue Lions I would have to say that both Mercedes and Annette are two of my least favorite characters in the game. I don’t outright hate them or anything, but even while playing the Blue Lions route they came across as boring and uninteresting. And were quickly replaced on the battlefield by other units who could fill their roles.
Which just so happened to be the Black Eagles students Linhardt and Dorothea respectively. Both of them being two of my wife and I’s favorite characters. Linhardt is such an interesting character in that he’s lazy as fuck, and likes to sleep all the time. But can be strangely profound about things. So basically a stoner, except he’s also a scholar.
Dorothea on the other hand is our favorite girl in the game by far. She’s the flirty one, who actually uses that flirtation to her advantage in manipulative ways. But the majority of her supports are still really fun to see her teasing people. She also has a pretty great backstory, and I’m not just talking about her ass.
In our first playthrough we recruited most of the characters. It was really disappointing to miss out on those few we couldn’t get, but it also makes me more eager to play the Black Eagles and Golden Deer stories to see more of those characters.
Speaking of Golden Deer, our favorite character in the game is an unlikely one. The big, burly, and beefy Raphael who is as dumb as a bag of rocks, but with a heart of pure gold. It really says something that the character with the least appealing design out of the whole cast managed to overcome that to the point that he’s our absolute favorite character.
The thing about Raphael is that even though he’s usually played off as a joke character, the kind guy that thinks with his muscles and his stomach instead of his brain, who’s always either stuffing himself full of food, or getting buff. He’s the one character that really wears his heart on his sleeve. There’s never a moment in that game where Raphael is anything but completely honest. And he’s so incredibly kind. And his empathy for his fellow students is so strong that he’s able to overcome any lack of wits to really cut to the heart of any given problem, in his own special way.
There isn’t a bad Raphael support. I truly believe that. We’ve seen a lot of them at this point and that’s never been the case. Most of them are among the funniest parts in the entire game. And all of them feel like genuine bonds of friendship. Of particular note, his interactions with the usually stoic Shamir are without a doubt the funniest scenes in the game.
I could go on and on about the characters. Flayn and Seteth are another pair of favorites for us, with genuinely funny scenes, and some of the most insightful ones in terms of lore. Ferdinand and Lorenz are probably some of the only good “foppish” characters I’ve ever seen, and they’re both extremely good characters in their own right. And the little bits I’ve seen of characters like Claude, Hilda, Lysithea, and Petra make me think I’ll love them too. Though it’s a little disappointing that characters like Bernadetta and Marianne who were early favorites before I played the game, ended up falling short of that in one way or another.
END OF SPOILER WARNING
So, there you go. A bunch of words about a Fire Emblem game. That’s how you know it’s one of my game of the year lists. I think I’ve said my piece on the game, I just hope I’ve properly conveyed my feelings about it. I think it’s a great game, and certainly one of the better ones in the series. But I still feel conflicted about it whether that’s because of some of its shortcomings, or perhaps a lingering unease that, while I think Three Houses is awesome, I hope that the success of this game doesn’t mean that every Fire Emblem game going forward will follow this same blueprint.
As for the future of Fire Emblem? I guess I can go back to having “The next installment in the Fire Emblem series” be one of my most anticipated games. Personally, I’m hoping the rumors are true and we get another remake. And as much as I would love to see some amazing definitive edition of my favorite games, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, that, you know, people could actually afford to play… I think the best bet would be to remake the Jugdral games. People really need to see Genealogy at least, and I think there’s incredible value in revisiting that story in whatever form it might take.
2. Code Vein
(Best Surprise): Not only does Code Vein take home the coveted award for “Best Surprise” which has a pretty good conversion ratio of going from “somewhere around 3rd place” to “one of my favorite games of all time”. (Don’t ask me, it’s just a thing though.) It’s also the winner of the (Best Soulslike) award because I didn’t bother to play The Surge 2, and Sekiro was another in a line of truly, truly disappointing video games that came out this year that I was super duper excited about until I played them. [Insert Upside-down Smiley Face emoji here.]
I hope that if you follow me on Twitter and you got to this part you’re just laughing right now and probably think “that motherfucker” or some such, right? I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that knows me that Code Vein was going to be on the list. But the question is, did you think it was going to be this high? Did you think it was going to be number one? Or did you think I was just making up a bunch of bullshit about how good the game was to sell a few copies of it to some people? (I can confirm that several people have bought this game and I’m to blame.)
The simple fact of the matter is that I really was not prepared for how much I was going to love Code Vein, and the benefit of surprise is always a powerful trait for a game to have when it comes to appealing to me. Let me just clear the air here, if there was actually any doubt, I’m 100% serious about how much I like this game, and I’m also being completely sincere when I say that it’s one of the best derivatives of From’s infamous series of games that I’ve played.
Real quick, before I gush about this game, I just want to give a shout-out to the game Ashen, which originally came out on Xbox and PC around this time last year, and came out on PS4 and Switch earlier this month. Like Code Vein, Ashen is another studio’s take on the “Soulsborne” formula, and also much like Code Vein approaches the genre a bit differently. I would argue that both games are far more forgiving than From’s games (though Ashen has parts that are noticeably harder than anything in Code Vein), and both games feature a constant AI companion to assist you on your adventure. I think that game is pretty damn neat, and encourage you to check it out at some point if you like Code Vein, or Souls games in general. That’s all.
You know, the crazy thing is that most of what I said about God Eater in comparison to Monster Hunter can be reapplied to my points about Code Vein and Dark Souls. Code Vein is a more story focused approach to that genre, it’s anime as hell, it’s got over-the-top action, amazing(!) character designs, it’s more action-y, it’s more casual, and is it any wonder both games stem from the same place?
The objective with Code Vein must have been to recapture what they did with God Eater. And while the main God Eater team at Bandai Namco Studios was hard at work on Code Vein, Shift stepped into handle development on God Eater 3. I’m glad we ended up getting both games, but it’s clear to me that Code Vein is the successor to God Eater, and it brings a much bigger production to the table than that series has.
Another crazy thing is that I probably don’t have a ton to say about Code Vein compared to the rather lengthy rant about Fire Emblem Three Houses above, or the fucking megaton that’s about to pop off for the #1 game below. I think it’s pretty easy for me to explain why I like Code Vein, and what I think it does right.
I think that the developers fully succeeded in what they set out to do. If we can assume that their intention was the take a genre of game like Monster Hunter, or Dark Souls, that have plenty of really amazing things about them, but come with very high barriers to entry. Take the fundamentals of those games, and tweak it into something that is way, way more approachable while still offering an approximation of what it’s like to play those more challenging games.
If you don’t know me that well, and you think I’m just trying to shit on From Software between the comments I’m making here, and my dig at Sekiro earlier, know this: I love From’s modern games. Dark Souls is a top 5 favorite game for me. When it finally clicked with me it was a life changing experience. It fundamentally changed how I approached more demanding games.
That allowed me to appreciate Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 2 & 3, and Bloodborne. I think all of those games are nothing short of a masterpiece in one way or another. However, the direction From decided to go with Sekiro was one that I just found disagreeable. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, because I’m not really here to talk about games I didn’t like this year.
Anyway, back to Code Vein.
I’ve eluded to the winning combination here that I think makes Code Vein a more digestible game. But quickly: The overall difficulty level of the game is far less demanding than that of its peers. The ability to have a constant companion at your side at all times really, really goes a long way. As some of them are quite powerful and useful. And even at their worst can offer a valuable distraction to the enemy so that you can catch your breath.
The game is more interested in telling you a story than From’s approach to obfuscate things. As a result, it’s always pretty easy to figure out where you need to go, and what you need to do. There are tutorials for everything that fully explain the game. And just in general it seems like the game isn’t actively trying to fuck you over as part of the experience.
Again, all of these things could sound bad to you if you’re a Dark Souls fan. They drastically change core rules about those games. I’m not even saying that I prefer this approach necessarily, but I do think it’s a very important point to emphasis about the game none the less.
When you consider the above, I’m glad that I can say there’s more going on in Code Vein than just “Hey, it’s Dark Souls, but ez mode”. As a matter of fact, a lot of the other components that make up Code Vein help distinguish it as its own game that has its own ideas, and some of those ideas are pretty fucking awesome!
I think when it comes down to it, one of my absolute favorite things about Code Vein is the freedom the player has to experiment with different character builds. There’s something to be said about a game making you commit to a single build and see it through to the end. There’s also a middle ground between the two where you have the option to respec your character in a limited capacity.
Here’s basically what you need to know about your character in Code Vein. Your build is made up by two underlying components. Your Blood Code, and your armor. Blood Codes are essentially character classes that will determine what kind of stats and abilities you use. Armor on the other hand boosts your stats through a process called “scaling”, so you basically want to pair up armor that scales well with the stats you want to use in your build.
Each Blood Code comes with a different set of abilities you can use and learn while that Blood Code is equipped. Once you master an ability (by having it equipped and killing a certain number of enemies) you’re free to use that ability on any other Blood Code.
Oh yeah, you’re also allowed to switch your Blood Code at any time without any sort of penalty or restriction. This makes it very inviting for players to try out different play styles.
During my first playthrough of the game I was able to try out pretty much every conceivable play style you could try. That isn’t to say there weren’t a ton of variations upon those types I could have tried, but if we’re talking “big sword tank”, “mage”, “death by a thousand cuts”, “melee/mage hybrid with offensive magic”, “melee/mage hybrid, but with buffs”, “I dunno, let’s try using a spear? That’s cool.”, “wow I’m just going to be invisible for this entire zone and never have to fight anything except for the boss,” and finally “god dammit I fucked up and didn’t get the Fionn blood code, so I guess that hammer build I wanted to do is out the window, I might as well lie down and die.”
All viable options!
There are other factors to consider when building your character to, like which weapon type to use. Or how you should go about upgrading your equipment. And while the game does a pretty good job of tutorializing everything, not everything is as clearly explained as it should be. And in some instances it might pay to visit a site like Fextralife to get some helpful information to point you in the right direction.
Still, at it’s core, I just love how flexible the game is about letting the player try out new things. And I wasn’t joking about them being viable either. Sure some builds and setups can be more overpowered than others, but almost anything works at some point in time.
As for the actual combat and exploration, it’s similar to the Souls games. You usually want to cautiously make your way through an area while conversing your renewable healing item, exploring to get loot, and getting to Bonfire-like check points. Smart play will help you every time, so long as you don’t underestimate the situation and don’t take things for granted.
The boss fights in this game are generally pretty damn cool, with some really exceptional ones tossed in there. Some of these can be on the tough side, but a change of tactics could make all the difference. Even just changing your equipment to account for resistances can have a dramatic effect.
I’d also like to note that there are some pretty cool areas in the game, but some are clearly better than others. Also if you’ve played a number of Soulslike games you will more than likely recognize certain areas and bosses as being cut whole cloth from a Souls game. Is it a bit shameful? Maybe, but I find it amusing, and the good stuff still works.
Lastly I’ll briefly talk about the “non-gameplay” parts of the game, because I think this is another noteworthy thing about the game that I quite enjoyed.
The main story of Code Vein actually feels pretty familiar to the stories found in the God Eater games. The world is a dangerous place filled with vampires essentially (instead of the monsters in God Eater) and your character is the chosen one who’s going to be able to fix all the terrible shit that’s been going on. That’s selling the game’s narrative a bit short, but it does have quite a few anime story tropes in there. That isn’t to say things don’t get more interesting as you go. And the game has some great characters to help support the plot, but you should probably know what to expect before you go in.
The game also has a very distinct look to it, and you’re either down with that aesthetic, or you hate it. I’m firmly in the camp of thinking attractive anime vampires as designed by fans of the early 00’s Hot Topic aesthetic is extremely my kind of bullshit, and yes, I’m 33 years old, shut up.
While the game might not have the most challenging narrative, it does a great job of presenting it to you. Aside from the standard cutscenes you see as you go throughout the game, putting together your band of allies, and learning who the bad guys are. You also frequently spend time reassembling these things called Vestiges, and this is where I think the game legitimately pulls off some impressive stuff.
The Vestige’s value in terms of gameplay is that they allow you to unlock new Blood Codes, and more abilities within those Blood Codes. That’s cool and all, but what they do with them narratively is actually rather cool.
One of your party members is a girl named Io, who I love by the way. She’s one of my favorite character designs this year. Yes, she’s a scantily clad anime lady with gigantic boobs, and once again I feel alright in telling you “I’m into that, so lay off.” Anyway, she’s also a really fascinating character (No, come on guys, I’m serious). Her role within the story is secretly one of the most important ones, and she can act surprisingly cute despite the whole, lack of any real human emotion thing.
Anyway, Io has the ability to reassemble the various Vestige pieces you find, and once complete your character is sent into an interactive dreamlike state where you walk through a series of vignettes that tell you about each character’s past. See, all the Vestiges are lost memories of different Revenants you encounter in the game.
It’s honestly a really cool effect, and it actually provides quite a bit more depth to the characters, as well as some decent world building. There are other moments in the game like this that make for some of the coolest stuff in the game and I really appreciate that they went for something unique here.
I guess I went on longer than I intended, but really though this is a great game. I like almost everyone that makes up your core team, especially Eva who is pretty much equal to Io in terms of hotness. And the only party member I never really liked was Mia for whatever reason.
There are other things I could bring up, but I feel like this is already a pretty good example of what to expect with this game, and why I like it so much. I don’t think it’s a “masterpiece” like the From games, but It’s arguably more enjoyable than some of them at least. And I’m glad that I’ve been able to share the game with some people. Cause I’d really love to see a sequel at some point.
Alright, my work here is done. I’m just going to assume my check is in the mail Bandai Namco? Right?
(Joking. I swear)
1. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers
(Game of the Year): “What?” you ask, “An Expansion to a game that came out in 2013? Really?” Yes. An Expansion is my Game of the Year for 2019. And that’s the simplest way to put it. Were I to expand on that, it would also win: (Best Story), (Best Soundtrack), (Best Multiplayer), (Best Character), and (Best Moment). I’m deadly serious. This was the year that Final Fantasy XIV ascended to one of the greatest games of all time in my opinion, and that’s thanks in no small part to the latest expansion Shadowbringers, aka, my Game of the Year.
Hey, have you heard about this game called Final Fantasy XIV? How about Shadowbringers, the latest expansion that came out earlier this year? No? Well, you’re in luck! I reviewed it already back when it came out. So head on over there if you want to hear what I think, about it, mainly the main scenario quest.
With that out of the way I can at least shave a few pages off of this list. “But, Joel” you say “If you already reviewed the game what more do you have to say about it?”
Well, a lot more actually. When I finished the Shadowbringers campaign back in July, Zara and I had only actively been playing the game again for two and a half months. Our time with the game is touched on in that review a bit, but it’s pretty outdated information at this point. Since coming back to FFXIV in May, we’ve pretty much played the game every single day since then, with very few exceptions.
As you might imagine, that’s a lot of time to spend with a game. As it is, the /playtime on both of our characters is at least 130+ days. That’s a chunk of a year right there spent logged into the game (over the course of playing the game on and off since 2014 mind you, but still.) Some of you may know that the video game “Final Fantasy XIV” has made my game of the year list three times now, including this one.
The first time was back in 2013 when the game came out, almost as an honorable mention in the number 10 spot on my list. I only briefly played the game because my wife couldn’t, and actually wouldn’t join me back then to play it. But I thought it seemed cool.
The second time was in 2015 when the game’s first expansion, Heavensward, came out. Number 2 on the list. Quite a big jump, but for good reason. My wife and I bonded immensely over that game since we started playing together in early 2014, and all the way up through Heavensward which was the best the game had been up to that point. Such an amazing expansion that meant so much to both of us.
Stormblood did not appear on any of my game of the year lists, and it’s not because we didn’t still like the game, but that was easily the worst expansion of the three, and we didn’t stick with it nearly as long after completing the campaign.
So, here we are in 2019 and the game is on here again. It’s number one this time. Now here’s the thing. I think by its own merits, the Shadowbringers expansion was my favorite game I played this year. The 60 or so hour long campaign was a blast. The adjustments and refinements they made helped improve our overall experience with the game as a whole. But the story, characters, music, and the actual gameplay of that Shadowbringers MSQ by itself is the best thing I’ve played all year.
But I already spoke about that in the review.
So instead, I’m going to spend this time telling you what we’ve done in the game since then. How much has changed about how we play the game. The new ways we learned to appreciate the game, and find enjoyment in activities we never thought we would. The additional things they’ve added in patches since the expansion was released. And ultimately why this is close to being our favorite game of all time, and why exactly it means so much to us. So, strap in.
After finishing the MSQ, me on my Samurai, her on her Black Mage. We kind of just stopped with endgame progression. That’s never been our thing. We’ve barely ever run any endgame content when it was new. We would usually spend the entire expansion in whatever gear you get when you hit the level cap, and then pretty much wait until a new expansion was getting ready to come out, quickly grab the easiest gear we could find to meet the minimum item level requirement to make it through the expanded story quests that are added in each patch. Then boom, ready to do it all over again with the next expansion.
This time wasn’t any different, and it seemed like it would only be a matter of time until we got bored of doing whatever non-endgame activities we could do. However before we could even begin to get bored with it, we decided to level another pair of characters up to 80.
I can’t even remember the driving reason behind this other than I had just got Paladin to 70 recently, and she had Red Mage at 70 and thought she might have more fun on it than Black Mage. So we set about doing that, but in a variety of weird ways, essentially ways that didn’t require us to do the dreaded dungeon roulettes.
A quick summarization of the roulette system would be to think of it as a series of “playlists” for the game’s dungeons. When you queue up for one of these roulettes you’ll randomly be grouped up with other like minded players. The true beauty of this system is that any kind of player can benefit for queuing up for these dungeons. If you’re making your way through the story for the first time, or leveling in lower level dungeons — you’ll be matched up with max level players who are doing these roulettes for a currency called “Tomestones” that will allow you to trade them in for max level equipment.
It’s honestly amazing how effective it works. There are some wrinkles here and there, but for the most part you can generally find a group for any content you need to do within a reasonable amount of time (unless you’re a tank or a healer, in which case it’s not uncommon for your queue to pop instantly. DPS… yeah, not so much.)
So anyway, we didn’t wanna fuck with any of that.
We always had this mentality about the group content in the game. The social anxiety of playing with other players was a real concern, and as a result we weren’t very well versed in being able to run dungeons. It was only when the game required us to do dungeons that we would do them at all.
It was for this reason that I had a level 70 tank, but hadn’t tanked a dungeon since A Realm Reborn, the 2.0 version of the game. Instead we would opt for less challenging, but much more time consuming methods of leveling like our daily hunt targets, beast tribe dailies, and the occasional FATE grind. All activities within the game that can comfortably be soloed for the most part.
Through these same methods we got both of those jobs to 80. Well, we still wanted to play the game. So we figured we might as well level up more jobs. And that just kind of became our goal for a few months there — to level up all our jobs to 80.
However the unorthodox way we went about it with the last pair of jobs wasn’t going to cut it, so it was at this point that we actually mustered up the courage to try the dungeon roulettes. Much to our surprise, they weren’t nearly as bad as we thought they’d be. Things might have been a little rough in the beginning as we adapted to things, but it didn’t take us long to become a lot more comfortable running group content.
This lead us to continuously push forward into new milestones. If we started just by doing leveling dungeons, we eventually moved on to queuing up for trial fights (big raid like boss encounters). We eventually found out how useful the Main Scenario Roulette was. A chance at getting one of two dungeons that were painfully easy to complete, but have the odd caveat that there are a series of long, long cutscenes in them that are unskippable by anyone in the party.
So in the instance of the Praetorium, each run takes about an hour — 45 minutes of it being unskippable cutscenes! Madness! Why would anyone do this? Because you basically get an entire level’s worth of experience regardless of what level you are.
As we grew more and more confident in our abilities, we decided to step even further outside our comfort zone. Picking up different roles entirely. We both ended up leveling Dark Knight and White Mage together (We did it one way, then switched jobs and did it the other way.) So we were playing together as the tank and healer of the party. Arguably much more stressful jobs than playing any of the game’s various DPS jobs.
It was the first time I had actually tanked in years. And the first time I had ever healed anything. Zara on the other hand was new to basically everything. She had only played magical DPS the entire time we’ve been playing the game. So seeing her go from that, to melee DPS, to healing, to tanking. And being great at all of them — it was amazing to see. And not only was I proud of her, but proud of myself for coming so far.
Our setup for playing the game, by the way, is that she sits here at my PC and plays the game on there, and I sit behind her and play the game on the PS4. So it’s easy enough for me to glance over at her screen at help her, or for me to shout things out during battles.
This setup ended up doing wonders for us, because it was pretty easy to help each other out if we needed to. Plus we just spent a ton of time together on this game we both loved. And we’re growing fonder of with each passing day.
We’ve made a ton of progress in the game since Shadowbringers came out. Here I’ve included screenshots of our character’s job pages. Showing you how many of them we’ve managed to get to max level already. As well as our current item level, which is honestly pretty high, especially considering where we used to be in the game.
As for my opinion on the jobs we’ve played so far. My favorites are definitely Dancer for Ranged DPS, Dark Knight for Tank, and White Mage for Healing. I’m still trying to decide between Samurai and Dragoon for Melee DPS, and out of all the Magical DPS jobs I’ve been able to play on Zara’s character — Summoner seems to be the best of the bunch right now. That’s Zara’s favorite for sure. But lately she’s been loving her Dragoon, and I know she agrees about Dark Knight and White Mage.
As a result of all this leveling, we’ve really been able to see what other play styles the game has to offer, and how to work better with them as a team. Just basic knowledge of all the jobs goes a long way to giving you an advantage in a lot of situations that other, more specialized players might not have. It’s also fun to be able to try out so many different things, with the goal being to be able to switch to anything we like to play whenever we want.
Back in October, the expansion’s first major patch came out though that added some exciting things, and as a result managed to push us even further with our progress. Patch 5.1 introduced things like the Pixie Beast Tribe Quests. Beast Tribe Quests have been in the game since ARR, and are a decent way to earn exp, and even some tomes in a pinch. But the main reason for doing them is to see the story associated with each Beast Tribe, and more importantly to be able to purchase rewards from the vendors of each tribe, the inventory being tied to your standing with that particular tribe.
Not surprisingly, The Pixie Beast Tribe storyline is probably the best in the game, considering in takes place in Il Mheg, probably our favorite zone in the expansion, and deals with the Fae Folk who live there, mainly the Pixies, but there are lots of Porxies involved too (The adorable pigs with wings). You can even get a plush Porxie for your home, and at the end of the quest chain you get your very own flying pig mount.
The main story also continued in 5.1 , as is customary for each major expansion patch. And while the story right now is a step back from how excellent the Shadowbringers main campaign was, it feels like it’s setting up the next major event in the story. Which we just found out a few details about the upcoming patch set to release in February and… well, they’re putting Ruby Weapon in the game.
Fuck.
Anyway, the MSQ was fine. The Pixie Dailies were great. But those weren’t the biggest draw of the patch. No, that would have to be the NieR Automata themed crossover raid, written by Yoko Taro himself, featuring music from Automata, and including a brand new remix of Weight of the World that’s mashed up with the iconic Prelude theme that has been a part of Final Fantasy history.
If that wasn’t enough, the rewards from the raid are even more enticing. All of the actual equipment you can get in there is designed off of the YoRHa outfits from the game, with male characters usually looking like some variation of 9S. And girls getting to dress up like 2B. Even more still, at the end of the raid there’s a bunch other fun rewards. Like a 9S Triple Triad card, Orchestration Rolls of all the NieR Automata songs used in the raid, including the Weight of the World Remix (These can be “consumed” by your character to add them to your Orchestration Roll Log, and further used from there to customize a playlist for your home).
And to top it all of, there are two different Pod minions based off the ones from the original game (one of the Pods has an incredibly low chance of dropping however), and finally a chest containing a full set of cosmetic gear that looks exactly like 2B’s outfit. That used to give female character’s a big upgrade in the “back section”, but 2B’s glorious ass was sadly nerfed in the latest patch due to a technical reason. As part of the previously mentioned Live Letter (a quarterly live stream where the devs talk about what’s coming up in the next patch), FFXIV’s producer Yoshi-P made sure to inform everyone that they would be restoring the booty in the next patch, which was accompanied by him pantomiming a shapely ass in front of tens of thousands of viewers.
FFXIV is awesome.
And if that’s still not enough! The actual storyline for the raid is incredibly well done, and seems to be attempting to tie the NieR universe to the FFXIV universe (which is usually how they handle all the content that is directly related from other Final Fantasy games into this universe) and it seems like it might be going to some extremely interesting places for both games, if you care about the story in either of them? It’s fucking nuts. And it’s amazing. So far we’ve seen 2P (Who was originally introduced as the “2nd player costume” in SoulCalibur VI??) and even 9S makes an appearance in there. And we’re both excited as fuck to see where all that goes when they add the next wing of the raid.
And speaking of raids… we actually dug into some older content and cleared out the entire Omega series of raids from Stormblood, which were notable because they featured bosses pulled directly from Final Fantasy 5 and 6. You fight the Phantom Train! And Kefka! And many more!
And since old raids just weren’t enough, and the NieR raid is technically an Alliance Raid (24 players as opposed to the 8 person parties in a normal raid. The Alliance Raids are usually the more “Casual” raids.) We finally jumped into some real endgame content and did the Eden raid which is the current normal raid series for Shadowbringers. It’s loosely tied to FF8 in kind of a disappointed way, and doesn’t seem nearly as cool as Omega. But it still has some pretty awesome fights.
And… we just farm that shit for gear? For our alt jobs? Like we’ll just casually queue up for a few runs at night when we don’t feel like doing anything else? It’s all fucking madness. I cannot believe how far we’ve come in this game.
All of this is to say, it’s a pretty unorthodox entry for one of my game of the year lists. Yes, I stand by the fact that Shadowbringers is the best new game I played this year. But more important than that even is the fact that FFXIV, this game that was already very special to us in so many ways — is even more special now.
The amount of progress we’ve made in just a few months is staggering. We watched each other steadily improve at playing the game. Watched each other learn new jobs, and roles, and learn how to clear more difficult content. To the point that we have it on “farm” status.
It’s more than just “Hey, we got good at this game.” It’s been like, a real point of pride for us. The feeling we get from accomplishing so much is really hard for any other game to match, honestly. There are moments in games like Monster Hunter, or Dark Souls, or even something like SaGa Scarlet Grace where that dopamine kicks in. You get all hyped up for finally beating something you struggled with so much. And it’s a great feeling.
But how does even something as impactful as that compare to a game that we’ve honestly spent 1/3 of a year, in hours played, playing together? With characters that we came up with together? That can do something as crazy as killing a god, to just hanging out casual clothes in the basement of our in-game house?
That’s a lot of time to spend in a virtual world. Constantly accumulating items, and experiences, and mastery over different jobs and roles. Following along with a story that’s been going on for years and years now. In a world that increasingly has more lore, and characters, and stories added to it as time goes on?
And being able to get that rush of nostalgia too when they put in something from some past Final Fantasy game? Or crying during your first run run of the NieR raid because the music hits you the same way it did in that original game.
I’ve written numerous stories about our characters, she’s drawn numerous pictures of our characters. Our characters in that game are married to each other. We have an anniversary coming up in February where we’re going to renew our vows. Partially to get some new goodies from it, but also because we’re that corny and it actually means something to us?
I know that most people aren’t going to read all this. And even less would even really care about it. But at the end of the day. All I can say is that, yes I 100% believe Shadowbringers is my Game of the Year for 2019. But Final Fantasy XIV as a whole is like a part of my life. And there just aren’t any other video games I can say that about.
Even with all that said, there’s even more I could go into. About how we’ve been a part of the same Free Company for years, and we’ve made actual long lasting friends with the people in our tight-knit little group. The number of hilarious things we see in that game on a daily basis, such as people’s extremely ugly characters, or borderline offensive character names. The fact that the game’s soundtrack features multiple tracks that can inspire so many different emotions in us. Or the fact that Shadowbringer’s main antagonist, Emet-Selch is by far the best new character introduced in a game this year, and the only fault I can find with him is that they blew their load with him entirely too soon.
There’s honestly just too much to put into words. And I understand that a lot of people aren’t going to be able to appreciate all of this the way we do. But all the same, thanks for reading. Hope to see you all in Eorzea some day!
Final Thoughts
Some of you might be aware of the hardships I went through trying to write the list this year. I walked away from my first writing session feeling extremely positive about what I’d written. The second session ended up with me spiraling into depression because I was so unhappy with what I wrote. And the whole process was both physically and mentally exhausting. If it wasn’t for my wife, I really don’t know if I would have posted a list this year at all. I’m still not the happiest with the final results, but I hit my goals as far as I’m concerned, and I think I’ve expressed why these games were my favorites this year.
I just want to quickly thank my wife, Zara, again for her love and support. And I want to thank my friends who have given me their support, and have taken the time to read through all these ramblings. And also thank you if you’re reading this and I don’t know you! Either way, I hope people enjoyed the list. It was a strange year for gaming, but this next one is already looking stacked. And we’ve got new consoles on the horizon, so that should be a whole lot of fun too.
Anyway, take care y’all!
