2022 was a weird year in gaming for me. There were a lot of games that I enjoyed, but a lot of those became forgettable when I started to think back through the year. So many that had issues which eventually kept them from being towards the top of any list. So let’s talk about the best games of the year for me.
6. Nioh 2
I’ve said enough about Nioh 2 over the last two years that all I’m going to say is that I put another thousand hours into the game in 2022. It’s my comfort game and it will probably continue to be even with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty being a thing that exists.
5. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
Stranger of Paradise would have been a contender for my Game of the Year if it had been built out difficulty wise the way Nioh was. The game plays incredibly from start to finish and has something even Nioh 2 lacks: zero unsatisfying boss fights. Every fight in the game feels fantastic and rewarding and kept me coming back for more for a good amount of time. Nioh 2, for as much as I love it, has a couple of boss fights that I think are just plain hot garbage. SoP has none. You combine that with the fact that the music is fantastic, the level variety is good, and the difficulty is challenging but fair. Even Tiamat, the hardest fight in the game, feels fair once you figure it out. However, the DLC roll-out kept it from topping the list and actively turned me off to the game as a whole. You see, they advertised the game as having an easy story difficulty for people new to the genre and it was great, it helped me get a lot of friends into the game who then bought the DLC excited for more story only to find out that it was locked behind not just the hardest difficulty, but after an entire playthrough of that difficulty. So if you were just in it for the story, the DLC was untouchable for anyone who had no urge to touch the Chaos difficulty.
4. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes
I am pretty open about the fact that I didn’t enjoy Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I might have if I had started with another one of the houses, but starting with the Crimson Flower route soured the entire experience for me and led it to being one of my least favorite stories in years. Three Hopes fixes all of that. Pretty much every single issue I had with the writing of Three Houses feels like it was addressed in a Warriors game of all things. The writing from start to finish of every route grips you and holds on. It’s a damn solid game that I had a blast with throughout the year. It also helps that it’s one of the best Musou games to come out in a long time. The first Fire Emblem Warriors I felt struggled balancing the Fire Emblem stuff with the Warriors gameplay but this time around they nailed it perfectly.
3. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
What can be said that hasn’t already been talked about by everyone? Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was 130 hours of perfection making my way to 100% of the content. Every side quest, every main quest, every little thing built one of the most incredible worlds I’ve ever experienced in a game. I’ve loved this series throughout its entire history, from Xenogears all the way here, and I can tell you, this is the first time I’ve finished one of these newer ones and wanted to just replay it rather than run back to Xenoblade Chronicles X. Everything from the music to the gameplay is flawless. It honestly is one of the best game experiences I’ve had in a long time and the only reason it’s here and not at the top is because of the emotional connection I had with the games in front of it.
2. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
This was a surprise that came out of nowhere. An Eiyuden Chronicles sprite- based action RPG prequel!. With a fun battle system and a story setting up the world, of course it’s one of my favorite things this year! The combat consists of 3 buttons, each assigned to one of your 3 characters who can swap in and out and combo with good timing. The game is meant to be a time waster before the main release, so most of the sidequests, of which there are a ton, are extremely grindy. But once you unlock the hard difficulty, the combat becomes incredibly rewarding and deep. The initial playthrough is accessible for everyone and sets up a world and characters that I am dying to revisit.
Game of the Year: Harvestella
Have you ever played a game demo that completely turned you off a game you would normally be interested in? That happened to me with Harvestella, it took everything you would get from a bad farm life sim game and doubled down in every way. A timer that moved way too fast, villagers with no personality or names, combat that felt a little bit dull; I had no intention of ever playing it. Cue a couple weeks after release and I start hearing how it’s a fantastic game with a great story, and that they addressed some of the issues with the demo, and eventually it was enough to push past my trepidation and wow, am I glad I did.
Every single issue that I had with the demo was addressed, and as soon as I finished the first in-game week, I was hooked. Everything about the game was accessible and deep and the story had me hooked from start to finish. And don’t even get me started on the sidequests. At first, every town you step into has everyone as just some nameless person. You step into that first town and see that only two characters have names and character portraits, so you guess you are supposed to care about them and no one else. Then side quests start unlocking, and suddenly characters start getting names, personalities, and their own stories that are sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always fascinating. It’s very much the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 formula where there is incredible writing scattered everywhere that fleshes out the world and the people in it.
The gameplay is also great, the combat has a job system that is varied and deep, with each job playing significantly different from the others. Eventually you find favorites, for me it was the Sage with floating blades of murderous light that turned me into a buzzsaw of death. The farming is also nice and relaxing, if you want to plant every single spot in your field, you can get it done by noon of your in- game day. It’s there mostly as a way to make money more than anything else. In similar games like Rune Factory, farming is still the main focus, however here, with it more on the story, they simplify the daily chores to things that can be finished quickly and easily with an infinite watering wand and things of that nature. You have one tool that does everything and it makes the process incredibly streamlined rather than having you scrambling for your water bucket.
It’s the chillness of it that makes it work. When I wasn’t streaming, I just spent hours farming and grinding in dungeons for materials, entire days doing nothing but fishing. It was just what I needed during a really stressful stretch of time and that is what eventually set it apart enough to make it my Game of the Year.
