Game of the Year time! Woohoo! Let’s get that 52 minute article read time!

It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to do writeups going over every game I’ve played in a year – though I’m new to Gamesline, it’s a yearly trend among my friends (my list for 2024 was one of the submissions for my Gamesline application), and it seems like this is the first year we’ll be skipping out on it, so this is well enough a place as any to continue the trend. This is, admittedly, an incomplete list—some games where I don’t have anything of note to write down aren’t included, though the entire actual “Top 10” games are present—but it should hopefully suffice. Admittedly, it goes the other way, too: Technically, not every game here is one I played for the first time this year, but they’re unique cases, cases of, “The last time I played this I was 10 years old playing this on an iPad”. I don’t think those opinions count anymore. And just remember: If you disagree with any of the opinions I have on videogames made for children, it is because you are a fundamentally weaker person than me. Get pwned, noob.

26. Sonic Forces

Sonic Forces is such a laughably miserable game that it’s almost entrancing. It’s Sonic at his worst in almost every category: it’s aesthetically dull, every environment sanitized and every model as cardboard as possible (though a contentious topic, I do feel this is easily one of – if not outright – the worst showings for every single modern character model). It’s a mechanical disaster, levels either a horrendously underbaked imitation of its 6-years-removed predecessor’s 2D style, mindless runs down a pathway that provides the illusion of 3D, or the rare genuine 3D section that only serves to reveal the controls are so horrendous that the prior 2 gameplay styles far outrank it, all of which beg for a speedrunning focus in a game so short and linear you won’t feel any time saved or improvement made in all but a small handful of levels. Narratively, it’s a game with really no investment in anything – the prompt ‘Eggman won and you have to fight back against a world you’ve lost in’ is as far as anything gets, the game often ascribing itself intensity and grandeur it is far too sardonic to provide – that honestly really could not care less about any other aspect of itself, but, ultimately, it’s Sonic Forces. We all know why this game is bad and how phenomenally bad this game is. This paragraph is about as much as I need to write because you’ve absolutely seen hundreds more of them online. Government-mandated bottom entry.

25. Persona 5 Tactica

This might be the easiest and most basic you can make a tactics game before it can’t actually be considered a tactics game. There are so many tools at your disposal to shred maps and decimate enemies that all only do one thing and – as a result of the game’s ‘Once More’ tools that mandate every nearly every enemy has some scripted way for you to steal free turns from them – don’t even do that thing well. I lost a single mission in this entire game and it wasn’t because a map was challenging or something, it was because I was just straight up going the complete opposite direction than intended. The unit customization is extremely simple and linear: weapons are flat stat increases, skill tree is a straight shot up, Personas give units at most 2 new moves, and these systems all require 2 entire menus each at minimum because this game has such anxiety over matching the aesthetic Persona 5 had while operating completely as style over substance.

The UI’s bloat in particular is massively annoying for a tactics game where enemy information needs to be made immediately and consistently evident, because so often instead of doing something like showing, “This is the enemy you are targeting with an AoE shotgun spread” it has to go, “Here’s every enemy’s burning heart icon all taking damage with no indication of which one you’re attacking! We angled them all 30 degrees! Isn’t this UI design unique!?”, making it needlessly difficult to understand what you’re actually doing sometimes. If you want a new Persona to give someone a new move, you have to go through 3 separate menus making that Persona, get right up to the final confirmation step, and only then see if you’re actually getting the move you wanted. It’s so obnoxious.

There isn’t really anything positive to note outside that core gameplay either. The music feels abysmally tired, confusing consistently too quiet audio-mixing and subdued instrumentation for the relaxed and freeform jazz style Persona 5 is known for, almost like the vocalist was falling asleep for every single song in the soundtrack. The aesthetics – when they’re not getting in the way of playing the game to look cool – look standard at best. The writing feels immensely frustrating, written like a schoolteacher trying to explain what ‘oppression’ is. There’s a scene where the leader of a surveillance state sends two of his citizens to labor camps, pretending it’s a reward to silence them, a scene that obviously communicates intent to anyone watching it… and then the party immediately explains this, beat for beat, despite said scene being the most obvious thing in existence. It is genuinely embarrassing that they chose to make this a story about governmental oppression and rebellion when they are this bad at conveying anything interesting regarding the topic. Every character is a charisma and interaction vacuum and on the whole it’s just an immensely boring and miserable story.

Just play Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle if you want a tactics shooter that goes on sale constantly. This game is a complete copycat of that game: same gameplay style with bloated mechanics, same map design and pacing, hell, almost identical enemy types, but hey, at least Tactica also makes every single one of the menus worse and also has a story, and the story sucks. I bought this for 8 bucks at a local Gamestop, the box had 2 different discount stickers on it, and I saw the cashier make an ‘oh thank fuck someone finally bought this’ expression when I put it in front of him.

24. Nubby’s Number Factory

fifth monitor content

23. Balatro

third monitor content

I can see the appeal of these kinds of ‘number go up’ roguelikes, it is kind of the coolest thing ever when numbers go up, but this format doesn’t do it for me at all. See, what you do is you make a JRPG where these sorts of numbers shenanigans happen, when one of those lets me get these numbers I’m forcibly gifting it to people on Steam at 3 AM because they mentioned it while half asleep. 

I’ll give Balatro points for having very strong sound design and aesthetics for what it wants to do – they’re good on their own, but especially phenomenal at suckering you in and getting you to go just another round – but I don’t like going another round. I don’t like games where I’m shown three cards and then I pick one of the cards. That’s not my kind of game.

Hey! That image of Balatro on a Gamesline GOTY list looks kind of familiar!

22. MOTHER 3

MOTHER 3 is a great game for encompassing what gets under my skin with so many RPGs. Two things, in particular: a complete disinterest for their combat or mechanics in favor of the story – an understandable concession, though one that always confuses and infuriates me, when such a core concession is made it leads me to wonder why not leave the genre altogether – and a fear of its peers. A fear that it will be like them, other games that shoot for the moon in earnest, so it must either turn the other way and shoot for the sun, or shoot for the moon and insist it loathes that it is doing so.

This is a preamble that will matter for other games this year, too, but I bring these points up for MOTHER 3 because this game is one so viciously ravaged by both. In regards to the former, it is massively done in by how mindless its combat is. The rhythm mechanic – hit A in time with the music when attacking – accounts for so much of your damage output and combat is so basic (I presume to make sure the gameplay being difficult or confusing or the like doesn’t get in the way of people enjoying the narrative, which the game is so clearly focused on) that it’s just completely mindless. You so rarely fight more than one enemy at a time, so few enemies actually demand anything from you, and the rhythm mechanic is such a massive boost to your damage once you learn it that the game just becomes ‘learn the rhythm to each battle song, mash the confirm button in time with that, and just let everyone rhythm combo everything in the game to death and heal up after every few battles’. All bosses ask of you is that you spend the first few turns of battle debuffing their offense and buffing your defense because nothing but some of the game’s final bosses will ever resist or undo those abilities. You do not need to think or plan for all but a single boss in this game (which, after doing some minor research, is basically trivialized if you just buy some special armor for it anyways, and I elected not to) and it’s so uniquely infuriating how hollow it is mechanically. There’s almost never a moment where a combat encounter is fun in this RPG.

But MOTHER 3 is a game about its narrative, of course, that’s what everyone says and discounting it entirely solely to complain about its extremely substandard gameplay would be unfair, but it’s one that I can’t really find myself invested in. Maybe it’s a sense of disillusionment, maybe it’s unfair standards, but it’s so hard to find the way this game approaches grief, loss, the irrevocable and immediate changes in the world that it forces onto you, when it’s so disinterested in anything but that. Its characters, the people affected by this grief, the outlets for this messaging that would make it valuable, fall by the wayside, for the sake of its world, a place that wants to be wild and surreal and confusing and hilarious. And such intent is understandable: Tazmily’s devolution is by far the most compelling narrative element of the game because it is the only place the game’s focus on worldbuilding and the consistent inconsistency of it matters. It is where the game’s world is visibly destroyed and distorted into an Americana so similar to, but so much more sinister and destructive, than the one the MOTHER series is built on. It is easily the game’s strongest narrative element to me. But abandoning the vehicles for that concept—leaving the characters it affects as so basic their personalities can accurately be explained in about a sentence—makes it hard to resonate with any of the grief the world, the part that can approach engaging, is forcing upon them. 

MOTHER 3 is a game that, in effect, released much later than it was intended to, a story made for the Nintendo 64, a new console generation that it would’ve been one of extremely few RPGs for, that persisted until the era of the Game Boy Advance, and I think that’s what killed it for me. Its surrealism, its humor, its themes, everything, they had all become passe by the time it entered the world. A world that communicates grief and despair through absurdism and its rejection, a world that exists to create the feeling of going home after a funeral and getting a spread of restaurant coupons in the mail but not a single letter of empathy or emotion, is the world the genre lives in. It is a world the genre built itself on in the years MOTHER 3 missed out on and—to me, at least—it is why RPGs are fun. It is a game that wishes it had the novelty of its earlier peers and suffers endlessly for it because it must exist in a world with games that possess such things as hell houses and ragtime mouses that purely want those things to exist in earnest, and their stories and worlds are made stronger for it. It is punching air because someone picked up the sandbag it plastered a picture of a platypunk onto and threw it out a decade ago.

21. FNaF World

he’s joking right. spot directly above it, too. this is a comedy routine right. survey says fuck no

FNaF World is the aforementioned—or more accurately aforeskipped—fourth monitor content. It is a mindnumbing mash of colors and effects and, wow, this game would love nothing more than to give you a seizure. The battles are pure adrenaline and noise, and their technical simplicity makes it impossible for them to be so in a particularly good way. CocoMelon meets Chrono Trigger is the description I’ve most often heard, but at least that crossover would probably enable you to rationally think about its operation.

Despite it, the game manages to ride up here entirely off of its playground rumor-esque design. It is a game that encourages clipping into random objects, into searching for weird things hidden in corners, finding superbosses in pitch black darkness, yes, Mew is under the truck, yes, you can save Aeris, yes, if you keep the console on for a week and eat a lightbulb you will unlock Sonic. FNaF World thrives when recreating the insanity of those rumors, it is a game built on the misheard and poorly remembered rumors that another, older, more typical FNaF World may have inspired, and it thrives genuinely and it thrives immensely in the moments it does so, it emulates such moments in a way that feels organic to the series while paying homage to something of genuine interest to RPG culture in a unique and fun way, but it only thrives in those short late-game moments. 

Every other moment I feel like I’m gonna fall over and die from sensory overload, vomiting out a rainbow as I go.

20. Donkey Kong Country

It’s really hard to talk about a game like Donkey Kong Country because a Donkey Kong Country kind of starts and ends at just being that, at least for someone like me who has no real attachment to the character or series. I like this game fine enough, barring some of its levels just feeling like absolute bullshit and the concessions the gameplay makes for its aesthetics being consistently apparent (such as a way too zoomed in camera), but the technical novelty is at least a worthwhile excuse, I feel, and it does look and sound sufficiently impressive and atmospheric. It’ll come up again, but comparison is the thief of joy, and DKC has a really hard time comparing to so many of the ilk it shares its name with. It’s still a good platformer, just one that happens to share the family name with a series of truly excellent ones.

I must be honest, however, this game does serve a unique function to this list, mostly a benchmark game. Everything including and beyond this point are games I like well enough, and it would be a disservice to the remainder of the list to give an implication there is not a gulf of quality between them and a Persona 5 Tactica.

19. Trails in the Sky FC

there will probably be a pod specifically for this game where i will give more extensive thoughts. for now i will leave it at “not enough olivier”

18. RWBY: Arrowfell

RWBY is a series I absolutely adore. It isn’t perfect, it is riddled with holes and problems every which way, every volume has at least 3 things wrong with it—but I overwhelmingly find that I simply don’t care. It is a series I find beautiful and inspiring and every day I live in the same world as RWBY, the people that created it, and what the people who are no longer with them left behind, it makes me want to be better. It makes me want to achieve even a microscopic portion of their boundless creativity and drive – something I know I will never attain and yet the knowledge of that never upsets me because it means I have something to move towards every single day—ffddand it gets me out of bed in the morning. Because if they could do it? They could fight past their own limitations and make something so awesome and beautiful and inspiring in such earnest? I can do it too.

It is a shame that I have to admit such a personal love on such a milquetoast and basic game. Arrowfell is a licensed WayForward platformer, not their strongest by any measure, but the picture painted is immediate: it is sufficient.

Nothing here is bad and nothing here is standout. It works. It is playable and it is a “small smile creeping across my face” level of fun. I can’t really be disappointed by it: While a 2D platformer isn’t a genre I would ever imagine RWBY touching, nor is it a genre I would ever want it to touch over the dozens and dozens of better options (RWBY fighting game. RWBY fighting game. RWBY FIGHTING GAME), it works relatively well, if slow at times. Not much to say, really. It’s standard—above average for a licensed game, really, though WayForward is at least good at breaking that barrier—and it’s… standard. A real “get it on sale, but only on sale” kind of game.

17. Guilty as Sock!

“Friendslop” is an often used term, one that I find equal parts disparaging insult and legitimate descriptor—I use it myself as the latter because it’s so immediately evocative of the kind of game it’s focusing on; the fun part is you play it with friends specifically. It’s funny to laugh at these games. That’s the point. The gameplay mechanics are an afterthought.

I am not one to deny a game what it intends to be, such an idea displeases me, but that intent turns me off from so many games that often use this descriptor. More specifically, their insistence on the mechanics they do have to permit their interactions. Lethal Company is a well-enough made game, but it feels like a slog to me because monsters and treasures are so uncommon whenever I play that nothing really happens – the entire game’s premise is built on things that exist so rarely, they can’t be common because then the novelty that they must subsist off of is diluted, that the intended engagement and humor exists so rarely. Wormtown makes it annoying to play as the worm by design, it is an asymmetrical predator and prey game where the worm’s power is offset by limitations of player knowledge, and immensely slow to play as a human who must account for the theoretically immensely powerful worm. These games are framing devices, ultimately, for social interaction, almost nobody plays these games for their mechanical depth and they’re not designed for that—again, not a note I make disparagingly whatsoever—but I feel the ugly middle ground between ‘no mechanics at all’ and ‘enough mechanics to feel like they service consistent humor’ isn’t one a lot of them manage to avoid.

Guilty as Sock! manages the former. It’s an entirely improv-based game, every player given a role in a courthouse—attorney, prosecutor, judge, journalist, witness, so on—and must simply deduce whether the defendant present is guilty of some made-up crime or not. There’s no ruleset past the foundations upon which its improv is built there is no ‘objective’ past guilty or not guilty, a decision made entirely by the judge player, and only the attorney and prosecutor ever care about it – and in turn, it allows for about as pure an experience in this genre as possible. By shedding any actual mechanical depth at all, Guilty as Sock! is able to consistently be funny so long as you’re playing with funny people, which most of these games live and die by.

This does lead to the trade-off, though, that it is immensely hard to “quantify”, if such a thing makes sense. It’s the video game equivalent of a tiny board game manual in terms of depth, there’s very little the game can do strong or poor—its aesthetic is chipper, the customization is nice, the game runs steadily, it’s just kind of hard to discuss against the strengths and weaknesses of other games when there’s little I can compare it to in terms of what it does or does not do. It’s a very basic framing device for a game, not a complaint when it’s just 5 dollars, and it’s good at it, but it’s hard to place alongside things such as Trails in the Sky or Donkey Kong Country. You could probably debate me into putting it anywhere outside of the top or bottom five of this list. I like this spot fine enough for it, though.

16. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade

I’ve never had a happy history with Fire Emblem. Years ago, the first game I played was one Genealogy of the Holy War, at the recommendation of a friend who has it as their personal favorite. I did not have any fun with it, it sucked, and I hated it. A while later, on scouring for other recommendations, I found a 100% fully legally obtained copy of Three Houses, and played it with some friends. I did not have any fun with it, I spent an hour listening to them yell at what house I should pick, gave in, picked one I had no interest in, and then was slapped in the face with a calendar system, it sucked, and I hated it. Early in 2025, I gave Conquest a shot on hearing it was one of the best designed games in the series in regards to its maps, a topic I was interested in for my own personal studies on developing my own tactics RPG. I don’t think it sucked, truly, it was easily the best time I had with any of them, it was just too difficult a game to go into with the experience of only 2 early games – an intentional design decision as far as I’m aware, but not a design decision that made it a good first (third?) try.

But it didn’t suck and I didn’t hate it. At the time, I gave up, frustrated, but of course, this was a matter of studying, of improving my own skill as a developer by learning things from a game I had both heard was well-designed and was legitimately challenging me, even if most of it was due to a lack of knowledge. It would do me best that I come to understand how this game operated, and so it follows that it would do me best that I come to understand how Fire Emblem operated. Video games as homework! Woohoo!

So, one last chance. It would not be worth it for me to try it a fifth time, there is no reason I should’ve even bashed my head into this brick wall a fourth time, but I got a recommendation from a friend that this game would do it, a friend who has, over the 4 years I’ve known him, predicted my opinion on every single game I have told him I would play… absolutely correctly.

Sunk cost prophecy.

The Blazing Blade was one of the final chances the series had to win me over at all, and while I don’t find it a fascinating or immaculate or wonderful game, it did succeed in showing me the appeal of the games and winning me over just fine. It’s a fun time, with alright characters (generally: having a tactician you just throw your name onto and they’re you is just such an annoying atmosphere killer that makes the game impossible to take seriously whenever they’re brought up), fun aesthetic, really campy presentation of its story that seems to revel in its simplicity and scoots itself along, comfortably, into the map-to-map gameplay. The core gameplay is a step too linear for me – any amount of customization or passive abilities or anything in that field would have probably gotten me singing this game’s praises much more strongly, as without it so many characters feel almost superfluous (I get this series is Horse Emblem and mounted units are great but I don’t need 4 horse guys in a game that’s either ‘every enemy is baby hitting me with sticks’ or ‘Oswin and Marcus play every map by themselves’ difficulty-wise), though I also accept that isn’t the kind of game that this era of Fire Emblem was interested in being – but it’s fun and breezy in a moment-to-moment manner that said simplicity enables. 

A friend of mine mailed me his old copy of Three Houses about a week or two before this article gets posted. As of writing I have stayed up until 4 AM playing it at least 5 times. The return to Conquest is imminent.

I will meet Peri soon enough. Peri will show up on this site’s main page soon enough.

#15: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

I quite like the Disgaea series, if only because I love ruining every single game by breaking it into pieces. You may be surprised, given the low placement of Balatro, but I will destroy any game if given the opportunity. I don’t think this is any objective measure of game quality, but I also don’t think I would love the games I love if they didn’t have those small little holes in them that allow for stupid shit. Disgaea is the poster child for that idea, a tactics series designed to constantly make you feel like you are cheating, getting one up on the game, before it flexes its arms, showing you it has more than enough muscles to kick your ass right back, and then those grow and start flexing their own arms.

The first Disgaea game is a tricky one to approach, as the series has an extremely widespread availability – if you can buy Hour of Darkness on something, you can probably buy at least 3 others for about the same price – that I must confess make it difficult to judge on the independent merits that I should, or from what groundwork it laid, especially in comparison to its direct successor Disgaea 2. It, as a game that precedes the rest of the series, obviously does a lot of things mechanically worse than them. It simply hasn’t gotten there yet, and that’s totally fine, but this feature is, in and of itself, a matter of comparison and ranking. Hour of Darkness just suffers the hardest for it.

Worse Item World generation with way fewer features is a MASSIVE hit to a Disgaea game. It is very easy to find yourself in floor layouts you just cannot beat and must either use limited resources to escape – I have no issue whatsoever with the Gency system, I should note, I just find the first Disgaea’s lack of guarantee you can clear a floor makes the Gency you’d rather be carrying much less a tactical decision and much more a ‘ah, great, game fucked up, hang on’ one. You’re never not carrying a Gency, but it feels much less engaging to carry in 1 – or just turn the game off and lose the progress you’ve made on the Item World grind, a process that’s lengthy early on and shortened only once the game’s poor generation likely isn’t an issue. And these Item Worlds still have so little to do or search for that they pale in comparison to any half-decent system in the series’ other entries. There’s a few other issues – worse monster weapon diversity, inconsistent passive abilities, an “ultimate” class, so on – but the Item World being as simple and shoddy as it is is by far the game’s greatest weak spot gameplay-wise. It’s a randomized endless mode where every randomized endless level either feels the exact same or is the game having a mental breakdown trying to generate it.

The game’s narrative is typically considered its strongest feature – if someone in the modern era is recommending this game for any reason, it’s the story – and while I’d say this game’s writing is extremely strong in comparison to a game like Disgaea 2, it’s an extremely standard affair on the whole. There’s also the matter that very little of a Disgaea game is spent on their narratives, these are multi-hundred hour grindfests by design and the story is a relatively short typical RPG runtime within it. A vast number of the 100+ hours you’ll probably end up spending on this game if you like it do not involve ‘character’ or ‘narrative’ at all, they’re all gameplay, and again, in such a category is where Hour of Darkness scrapes by with a ‘pretty good’. It’s not bad, it’s classic Disgaea, but again: in an exercise such as this, one based around comparison, it’s hard to not look at this game and make comparisons. 

Would I recommend Hour of Darkness? Absolutely. It’s a fun time, it’s a strategy game made to make you constantly feel like you’re cheating or snapping the game in half, with endless tools and options to spare, the characters can be fun if a bit obnoxious or trope-y (though such a thing is a Disgaea game’s bread and butter), and it’s not like it’s a bad entry point to the series. If any of this sounds interesting, you should play it. It rules. Its sequels just tend to rule more, and one of those sequels is even on this list.

#14: Mouthwashing

I feel bad writing mostly negative entries for more popular and well-acclaimed games like this or Disgaea because I feel their praises are more consistently understood. If you like Mouthwashing in earnest, it makes sense why. I don’t need to sing the praises this game’s already gotten, it’s a compelling story, it’s got an aesthetic that although popular is extremely striking, the atmosphere is constantly tense, I just don’t have much unique or worthwhile to say about it barring a negative personal note.

Said note is that it’s got a relatively low placement because the gameplay segments—as minor as they generally are—rarely are servicing the game, they’re typically either extremely simplistic and generic horror chase segments or very basic puzzles that feel designed to burn time. The game is thick with tension as is, oppressive, demoralizing, haunting, all that good stuff. It doesn’t need an invisible horse monster chasing you through a cargo hold for 15 minutes to try scaring you because it has way better ways to do that. Overall a really strong experience, I just wish it did away with most of the more typical horror game elements that seem to exist purely to remind you of what genre it wants to be and went more “3D visual novel” with itself.

13. The House in Fata Morgana

I wish I could write out my deeper thoughts on this game but it’s really hard for me to mentally quantify what is and what is not a massive spoiler for this game. Even if I have some issues with it, I like The House in Fata Morgana quite a bit, I just have no clue how best to write about it in a list like this.

michel kinda bad though

#12: Undertale Yellow

I don’t really care for Undertale, partially for gameplay reasons—combat just isn’t engaging either peacefully (sparing puzzles are way too simple all game to the point Deltarune solved the issue by basically becoming WarioWare in an RPG skin) or violently (which is obviously by intent, it’s not a decision I’ll fault the game for) – but a big part of it is that I find its meta-commentary on how we engage with RPGs doesn’t really click with me, for a lot of reasons that Deltarune seems insistent on fixing (Mainly a bunch of factors that amalgamate into ‘the genocide route’s narrative is really lame when genocide is the most obvious thing someone would ever do on a second playthrough’). I don’t find it a bad game, I just don’t really enjoy it a ton. It’s just a good one.

Undertale Yellow nixes basically all of that meta-commentary, and while it doesn’t solve the issue of combat depth, it keeps the mind off of it, setpieces coming at a pace even Deltarune would have trouble keeping up with at times. The game’s core cast of characters that keep popping up helps make the world feel more engaging – the worldbuilding, too, is especially strong, it’s an earnest attempt at expanding the universe of Undertale in a way that feels natural and thoughtful. It’s got to twist a couple narrative knobs to do it, there are certainly a couple rips in the thread that ties it to Undertale, but I really cannot be assed to care and I really cannot understand people who discount this game because of those inconsistencies.

What Undertale does right, like its style of soundtrack, it keeps or, like some of its final bosses, even outdoes, and what Undertale doesn’t do right, it fixes, nixes, or has a backup plan for. It’s a great fangame – probably the shining example of a fangame – and it’s one I can’t recommend enough for anyone who even has a cursory appreciation of Undertale.

11. Sheep, Dog ‘n’ Wolf (Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider)

This game almost entirely sells itself off of its premise: what if we made a puzzle/stealth game operating off of Looney Tunes logic? A lot of puzzles in this game sound extremely absurd when worked through mentally, and there’s an immense amount of interactivity between the different elements you’re provided with that seems designed to make you catch yourself in the middle of your own thoughts and just start laughing about how absurd something like, “Hmmm… the bull will chase me if I wave the red flag in front of him, but he won’t run into the wall the piano is teetering on the side of. If I paint a tunnel underneath it… will that be what tricks him?” sounds. Every level is a comedy of errors (though some better than others) that you’re so rarely allowed to laugh at because you’re treating sneaking around in a bush so you can order a sheep costume from ACME catalogue as the life-threatening danger it is in this game. 

The game’s aesthetic is bouncy, angular, vertex animation very few games on the PS1 even come close to – it’s not a perfect representation of Looney Tunes, but for a game of this low fidelity, it’s an amazing interpretation, especially considering how snappy the animations permit the actual platforming controls to feel. The jazzy, laidback soundtrack almost exists purely to emphasize how stupid and meandering it all is, and yet, it is that meandering stupidity that makes it engaging. There simply is no puzzle too stupid for Sheep, Dog ‘n’ Wolf.

10. Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc

There’s a constant, flowing, boundless creative energy in every pore of Rayman 3. It’s not as directed as the prior entry, rather the opposite: there’s an energy of ‘we can do whatever the hell we want, so let’s do it’ running through this game’s veins. Single levels will contain gorgeous ethereal towers made of stars, adjacent to bumper car games with shoes followed by the game’s only swimming segment, dedicated solely to a single boss battle. The game’s sense of humor is dry, snappy, off-beat in the way so many games of that era were, but the mechanical and designed zaniness of the gameplay, the frenetic combat and score system that encompass the world, a beautifully lackadaisical world, complements it in a way that I can only think of a single peer in Crash Twinsanity doing with its own gameplay. It’s also backed up by extremely solid performances from its vocal cast, with special shoutouts to John Leguizamo and Ken Starcevic.

The gameplay is arcade-y, the aforementioned scoring system incentivizing you to treat what could otherwise be a relatively typical 3D platformer as a series of arcade levels, each their own mini Rayman 3 games. Route what you plan to do and where to go, nab high scores, platform smart; it’s surprisingly in-depth stuff for a feature you could just as easily write off that asks a lot of you in terms of engagement. Collecting the crystal items laid around the world, combating enemies, using the game’s first person camera feature to spot little secrets laid about its gorgeous world; it coalesces into an experience that wants you to love and understand Rayman 3. There are some slightly weaker spots: combat isn’t phenomenal, it so rarely is in these kinds of games, but it’s never frustrating, just another tool the game has in its arsenal. Done with one setpiece and onto the next, and servicing that, Rayman controls extremely nicely, and the vast array of power-ups helps a simple kit for a short game avoid feeling too bare.

Rayman is a series that is very consistently inconsistent, at least until they settled on using Origins’ engine for Legends (as well as an endless cavalcade of mobile games) and such a style finds its payoff in Rayman 3, a game not beholden to anything but its current whims. There’s a horror level. There’s acid trip railgrinding segments. One of the bosses is just the Micolash fight. It’s a game that expects you to roll with the punches, and if you can get in its rhythm, punch back in a very uniquely strong platformer for the time.

9. Sonic CD

oh my god it’s a sonic game where i have to actually think about how my speed interacts with the level design and there’s legitimate punishment for not thinking things through holy fucking shit no wonder why sonic fans don’t like this one

8. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

This one was going to get a full feature about how the passage of time can be more or less favorable to games, how I was affected by it (this is a game I played endlessly as a young child into my teenage years, then came back to as an adult to see how it would compare with my modern opinions and tastes), about the depths of freedom offered by this game in comparison to its predecessors, how it approached the formula the original games laid out, there was like a 4 page opener about Final Fantasy X and Tidus in there, yadda yadda yadda, a bunch of cool sounding stuff, and then one of the endless straws broke the camel’s back and I stopped writing about a Microsoft game.

But I feel I should give Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts its due here, at least, because it’s a really great experience. It’s a continuation of the original series’ sardonic humor, it goes for a unique aesthetic made to compliment the boxy constructions the game is designed around (though I will also admit: some of these character models are pretty wretched), has massive worlds that—despite a relatively empty appearance—are well-suited to a surprising diverse set of challenges and puzzles, and enables a massive amount of creativity and depth, both intentional and unintentional.

The game’s physics engine and vehicle design rules are a particularly… odd point. I have no idea where the creative solutions the game wants you to come up with begin, and where glitches the game has no idea should happen end. One of the challenges forces you to pilot a plane through a series of extremely tiny hoops—is the game asking precision of you, or is it asking you to make a tiny cube plane by just stapling the “plane” elements together into a cube that the game still technically registers as a plane? Is the pizza delivery mission expecting you to just rip off the giant ‘pizza’ sign stapled onto the vehicle that’s weighing it down, or did they not think of that and just put the giant ‘pizza’ sign on there to be cute? I have no idea, I don’t know if the game does either, and I love it all the more for it. I have managed to anger many a friend by asking if this one counts as an immersive sim, a friend count only beaten out by Bugsnax.

nintendo ripped this off for a zelda game btw never forget that

7. BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle

I fucking hate this game.

6. Labyrinth of Touhou – Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree

As mentioned prior in my Disgaea entry, I love whenever a game lets you get real stupid. Enter Labyrinth of Touhou, a dungeon crawler that spares no expense at making that extremely easy for you. There’s very little sense of punishment in this game, and while I definitely see it as a flaw for some people (and my biggest complaint with it is, ultimately, while it’s not hard for this game to be hard, it can feel really toothless. Also, some of these floor gimmicks were so bad I saw what they were and just turned the game off for the entire next week), I think the degree to which it enables customization without punishment for investment is nice. It’s its own style, it’s a game where you can do whatever whenever, and while I wouldn’t want every game to be like it, I enjoy Labyrinth of Touhou well enough for it – it’s a game entirely dedicated to RPG teambuilding and synergizing, so, they made a game that’s a teambuilder’s dream.

My favorite Touhous are Mamizou and Aya. 

By the way.

5. Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten

And so we come to one of our aforementioned “later Disgaea games”, A Promise Unforgotten. Playing the first Disgaea got me in a mood for more, as any ‘good but not the best’ game from a great series will do, and so, my eyes landed on Disgaea 4, a game that I often saw get the reception 2 did – strong gameplay, horrendous story, generally one of the stronger entries, so on – and while I quite like the series on the whole, 4 impressed me in a lot of ways I didn’t really expect it to.

The narratives of these games, again, don’t matter all that much, a Disgaea story is effectively a Disgaea tutorial, but A Promise Unforgotten seemed a lot more interested in it than it tends to be. Its characters and world feel suited to the series’ goals, everyone’s morals just so off-center, everyone’s core concepts – Fuka, a high schooler who died young and refuses to believe she’s in hell, or Desco, a weird monster girl who thinks she’s supposed to be the game’s final boss, but gets fought in Chapter 3 and spends the rest of the game in the main party so she can train herself up for when the final stage comes – so just weird enough they can hold their own as personalities while still staying in style, and the entire cast feels like they have a reason to be in the game as opposed to cases like the first Disgaea’s Flash Gordon parodies or Disgaea 2 throwing Adell’s siblings at you. 4’s cast is goofy, they’re weird, they can hold a funny conversation, they can be monumentally grating if you spend too much time around them, but that’s all Disgaea really wants.

It’s a surprisingly politically-focused game, so many of the series’ staple mechanics either reworked or have an emphasis put on the inane morally-reversed politics of the demonic underworld, where corruption and under-the-table deals earn you more votes, and actual policies are a surefire way to come out on bottom, and how that ties into the political stances of the ‘real’ human world. It infects the dark assembly, now a political map where you dispatch senators to different territories to build different government stations. It infects the online functionality, where you can send your own party members out into other people’s games to vote on what they can and can’t do. It’s an old game, the online isn’t particularly active, but it’s a game that very clearly wants and allows you to actually be a piece of shit demon – to other people, too – instead of just saying that’s what you’re doing like in the other games.

Mechanically, it’s more of the same, never a bad thing with a Disgaea game. Monster Fusion is the biggest in-battle change, another attempt to give monster classes more functionality (though I feel it pales in comparison to the game just making Magichange functional), the item and chara worlds are as extensive as ever, with the path system introducing a grander sense of choice and exploration that feels fitting for a mechanic you’ll be spending so much time on, it’s generally just another strong entry in the Disgaea series. I do take issue with its decision to postpone some things until late-game—trading off most worthwhile innocents, weapon mastery, and so on for post-game equivalents is really annoying, and it makes the grind to get to the grind feel uniquely slow for a Disgaea game.

Ultimately, I find A Promise Unforgotten to be the Disgaea that gets across what Disgaea wants to be the best: It’s irreverent, it’s deranged, every character is off their rocker in one way or another, and you can play it forever and ever and ever. Go play it.

4. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

oh my god he put a game from 2025 on his 2025 games list

CrossWorlds is just a super fun time. It’s a kart racer with great music, extremely fun drifting mechanics, and the gadget system is a great way to customize your playstyle without ever feeling like it’s just throwing the actual intended gameplay depths into the grinder. While I’ve a few misgivings—the game tries a little bit but really doesn’t play around enough with the fact it’s got so many Sonic characters freely interacting with one another, the jukebox is overall good but I wish it didn’t feel as restrictive as it is, and on the whole I’m not a crossover guy so the “CrossWorlds” aspect doesn’t really do anything for me – they’re all more minor elements of a game that’s very functionally sound and stylish. I’ve gotta hop on this one more often.

3. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

No More Heroes II: Desperate Struggle is a fun, short, arcade-style romp through a bunch of cool boss fights and setpieces. You gotta love setpieces. It’s nowhere as deep or thought-provoking as the first game (I have played the first one, I promise, it’s just not on this list), but it’s a fun and short time. It’s, keyly, a really fun and really short time.

Originally I had written something here about the differences the first and second game have in how they commit to their themes and ideas that, ultimately, read like it argued No More Heroes was kinda total dogshit at it. I got rid of it because every time I read it back I was extremely embarrassed at how amateurish it was, most of it operating under the assumption of ‘I think I’m trying to justify a weak game as having thematic intent’ as opposed to just taking the game’s intent on its face. It was super unfair to No More Heroes as a piece of art and I’m not happy with it. During my latest replay of it I’ve realized I respect No More Heroes a lot more than I do Desperate Struggle (which has, in turn, given me a bit of a dislike for the latter’s more serious narrative elements), and a lot more than I remembered respecting it last time I played in general, but I find the latter more blanketly fun. I’d give the award of ‘game with stronger artistic merit that I respect more’ to No More Heroes and the award of ‘game I’d rather spend an afternoon replaying’ to Desperate Struggle, and this game makes it up here on merit of how much I needed more of the latter considering my JRPG-addled brain. Maybe I’ll become a Sudahead someday and look back at this placement and cringe so hard my brain implodes.

When focusing on the gameplay itself, Desperate Struggle is, at its core, a boss gauntlet with levels inserted into it to hide that fact, a gauntlet that features a massive amount of distinct encounters that almost all demand different styles of play. ‘A game with a lot of bosses in a row’ is about all you have to do with a game for it to hook me. Nathan Copeland, the first real boss of the game, is a fight based almost entirely around spatial awareness and overwhelming your senses way more than any reasonable first boss would. Margaret Moonlight, an atmospheric duel with a sniper that chases you across rooftops. Matt Helms, an extremely destructive heavyweight that destroys the arena and mandates constantly updating and checking your surroundings as the fight goes. The list really does go on, to the point where I don’t think there’s a single fight I dislike. Ryuji, Vladimir, hell, I’ll go up to bat for the final boss having an instant-kill if he punches you when you’re on the wrong side of him. That’s awesome. I’ll even go up to bat for Million Gunman. I’m one of those disgusting freaks who likes playing the Shinobu levels. You give me a character that jumps into the air like I’m flinging a pickup truck around with a phys gun in Garry’s Mod, I’ll ask ‘how many obnoxiously mobile bosses do I get to fight with this thing’. I love Kingdom Hearts 1 platforming. That is my answer to that statement.

The soundtrack is great (a trait shared with the first game), the harsh visual style is great, every idea Desperate Struggle has is wilder than the last, the breakneck pace of the game compared to the first one helps set itself apart (and is instrumental to its fun factor, I feel), all in all, it’s a phenomenal quick, fast, fun experience to knock out in a day.

2. OMORI

the particularly astute twitter gamer might be looking at OMORI in the top 2 and MOTHER 3 in the bottom 5 and be wondering if i was dropped on my head as a child

This is probably a really odd game to see placed this high up considering the notes I’ve shared on some games prior, but I quite like OMORI. The gameplay manages to avoid a lot of common RPG pitfalls—a lot of ability/”spell” equivalents are situational tools, their use cases made much more interesting via the emotions system that turns a seemingly rigid party setup into something more flexible, allowing the game to constantly demand more of you than just turning into a “press every character’s best button over and over” simulator as so many RPGs can. The combat system is simple on the surface, but has a lot of strengths in execution, and is very willing to let you challenge things you shouldn’t, laying encounter upon encounter of weirdly difficult or uniquely designed enemies in places you might not even think to go. The biggest complaint I have with combat is that you’re limited to just one accessory on every character, because being able to synergize abilities from those together would’ve been a really great way to hit a balance of making character building exponentially more fun while still retaining the system’s intended simplicity.

As for the world the gameplay takes place in, it’s aesthetically very pleasing, the pastel and childish colors selling an extremely earnest story and being surprisingly adept at becoming moody and emotional (the entire final dungeon and its buildup are one of the strongest portions of any game I’ve ever played in terms of its music and visuals). When it tries to be haunting and esoteric in a dream-like quality, the game manages to feel distinct from its inspirations while very obviously pulling from them – it does feel a little too Yume Nikki-esque at the breaking point, but I can give it the short timeframe to go nuts considering how strong the rest of the game’s identity is. It’s also surprisingly restrained: I massively appreciate that there were maybe a handful of actual “scares” while still being content to constantly fake you out with them. A tease of a game, OMORI is.

The main cast is extremely well-rounded, and there are small glimmers of an impressive level of humanity in the characters that make it impossible for me to not love any of them, and the game’s core themes are ones that it expresses in a very strong and thoughtful way. I really love and respect that the game ends like it does. My only major complaint with the narrative is that I think the game signals the ‘main’ twist too hard to the point where I was second-guessing myself on if something else was supposed to be a twist. It’s not a case like Fata Morgana where it feels like it’s doing it out of obligation (“If you can correctly guess what the main twists are, you will also know exactly when they will happen and what other narrative events will also happen to facilitate the twist happening/being revealed there, so you figure out nearly the entire rest of the narrative by the halfway point of the game”), but it was a shame to be going into the big twist segment and basically already know what it was going to be. I’m not going to hold it against the game, but I do feel like it plays its hand a bit too early.

Ultimately, I find OMORI to be a really fun and enjoyable game, managing to get the core of what makes an RPG good – fun gameplay, atmospheric world, good characters, engaging story—across in an extremely compact experience that blends it with the horror genre in a way that gives it a unique flavor without ever feeling obnoxious, and it is easily my favorite of the indie RPGs it is often associated with. I didn’t expect to go in liking it as much as I did, but it’s always a pleasant surprise when that sort of thing happens.

let’s get down to busine

1. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy

darumi is going to say either “hawk tuah” or “67” in the dlc screencap this

GAMES I DIDN’T FINISH BUT WANT TO MENTION OR I DID FINISH BUT I DON’T HAVE A LOT TO SAY OR I DI

Patrick’s Parabox

This is an extremely strong and mechanically sound Sokoban game. I cannot recommend it enough to someone who has an interest in the genre for both its breadth and its depth, it’s just kind of hard to write anything interesting on this game because it is the purest ideal of a puzzle game. It’s a really great game you should play when you get the chance but I could also just review it in its entirety in a Bluesky post.

Gore Screaming Show

I was on track to finish it last year but then the laptop I was reading it on killed itself. It saw one too many of the CGs, I guess.

It’s a lot better than what I expected when someone told me to read a visual novel called ‘Gore Screaming Show’. My standards were admittedly not super high initially, but I like denpa, I like the fantastical set against the natural, the disconcerting reality and disconnect from reality they bring. It’s fun and it’s nice to read something that does so while also just being gory and disgusting as fuck sometimes. I can see what Darumi Amemiya sees in this stuff. 

I gotta hop on more eroge, he said, and then they dragged him away from the Gamesline website kicking and screaming

Oh… Sir!!: The Insult Simulator

you can play as/against hp lovecraft in this game and while that would normally be kinda lame you deal critical hit damage to him if you call him a racist which means it actually fucking rocks

The post Nikolas’ BADASS and GENIUS and CORRECT Videogame Rankings for 2025 appeared first on Gamesline.

AIn the news Babylon’s Fall is shutting down, Deltarune is getting an update, Overwatch is going offline for a couple days, EVGA is leaving graphics card manufacturing, and major layoffs have hit G4TV and Fanbyte. We also go over all the news from the Nintendo Direct like Zelda : Tears of a Kingdom, Pikmin 4, Fire Emblem Engage, Octopath Traveler 2, and all the farming games. At the Sony State of Play, we say a new Team Ninja game, Tekken 8, Pacific Drive, and the show closer, a God of War controller. Finally, we go over everything from TGS from Like a Dragon: Gaiden, Like a Dragon: Ishin, Like a Dragon 8, Street Fighter 6, Mega Man Battle Network, and the ultimate rare Konami W. That’s right, the remaster they’ve been teasing announcing forever wasn’t a Bluber Team Silent Hill or a Metal Gear remaster. No, it was a Suikoden 1 and 2 HD Remaster, and Lorelai is incredibly emotional about it.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo,  @john_michonski, @ChorbySP and @JudgementScythe

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 411: Suikoden Day appeared first on Gamesline.

In the news, Cyberconnect announced a sequel to Fuga: Melodies of Steel, Yu-Gi-Oh! Rush Duels are coming, and the boys are back with some looks at Yakuza 8. With the heat wave here, Steam is letting people know they should keep their Steam Deck’s inside for maximum performance. Lebron James and Rick & Morty are coming to Multiversus, the Sony purchase of Bungie has finally been finalized, and in potential great news Blizzard Albany is unionizing.  Outside of that, the FaZe Clan lifestyle brand company who seems to employ a lot of crypto scammers are now a publicly traded company, and Square finally is showing off their NFT’s by charging an extra $30 for digital versions of their action figures.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo,  @ChorbySP and @JudgementScythe

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 403: Lawn Perverts appeared first on Gamesline.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @LVmaeparian, @Horngal and @PunkParfait

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 334: Do You Think We Play Video Games for Fun? appeared first on Gamesline.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @horngal and @ScottBlah

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com, via Twitter with the hashtag #AskVGCC or into our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 295: Toilet Fairy appeared first on Gamesline.

For me, this was a year where I started with a clear assumption that gradually got torn away as time went on. While I expected certain games to be in my good graces, and they absolutely still are, so many hidden threats seeped out of the woodworks and weaseled their way into my heart. On top of all the new hits, I actually went back to play a bunch of older games for the first time, such as games I’ve meant to play for years and years but never really got around to doing it. To start off my list, I’m gonna write a few bits about those games, and why I think they hold up, and should be given a shot even today.

The Atelier Series

I’ve been meaning to play the Atelier series for like, what, five years or something? I’m huge on the Neptunia games and they’ve always been sold to me as those but with an extra bit of polish and a whole lot more gameplay direction. For once I actually feel like that selling point was right on the money, and boy does it rule. The Atelier games are all about cute girls doing alchemy and going on adventures with friends and family members while they solve generally laid back mysteries. While there are some entries that go more serious than others, I’ve found myself especially enjoying the Dusk Trilogy of games, which take place in a really grim post apocalyptic world, but almost entirely ignore this. Using a grim spooky setting as the backdrop for upbeat lesbian adventures is like my fucking ambrosia and if you’re the type of person who maybe is into that sort of thing then I highly recommend picking up Atelier Ayesha or Escha and Logy if you get the chance.

Final Fantasy VIII

So I haven’t gotten incredibly far into FF8, but I am absolutely in love with pretty much everything it has going on. This is a AAA juggernaut revolutionary game for the time where they make you spend like five minutes watching a man freak out and get a leg cramp falling over himself trying to ask a girl out on a date. For the time especially that’s incredible, and I found myself continuously impressed by more and more of the game’s presentation and ideas. People say a lot of games were ahead of their time, and that usually applies to complete failures or overlooked niche hits. I’d argue, however, that Final Fantasy VIII was the type of game that was absolutely appreciated for specific reasons back in 1999, and can be appreciated for even more twenty years later. Oh yeah the draw system by the way? Kicks ass. You know it’s a good FF game when everyone’s a Blue Mage.

Titanfall 2

You know I do a whole lot of talking about how Halo Reach is my favorite shooter of all time, and like, one of the best games ever made. In the time since Halo Reach, I’ve been increasingly disappointed both inside and outside the Halo series, as everyone tried desperately to either throw out any semblance of clever design and balance in favor of aping Call of Duty, or worse, Battle Royales. Titanfall 2 however, is one of the best damn shooters I have ever played and it is a CRIME that it didn’t get the staying power of any other big name shooter. With tons of options for traversal, a bunch of different mechs that all feel meaningfully different, and a co-op mode that’s a thousand times better than the suckfest that is Call of Duty Zombies, there’s just so much to do that it’s always a fun time. Sure the game is a little rough around the edges, with a very freemium style UI and an aesthetic that is simultaneously the best and worst, but it’s still a game I kept having a blast in no matter how many hours I threw in. I still haven’t even done the campaign which everyone hypes up so much, and I’m this in love with it! Please try it if you can because it’s a hell of a lot better, and has a much more cohesive design philosophy than any other FPS released in the last decade.

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

https://t.co/bUyb7Lrf6R pic.twitter.com/RZ361MOIbl

— RMT (@horngal) June 18, 2019

I like the Dragon Quest games now! As someone who actively avoided the franchise because I thought they would be incredibly boring and ugly, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed playing through the eleventh major installment. Though I still don’t care for the overall appearance of the game, something about seeing high fidelity Toriyama characters works surprisingly well, and the monster designs more than make up for whatever disgusting humanoids the game throws at you over the course of its 100+ hour campaign. Though the series did end up being as faithful to the core tenants of a JRPG as I expected, that never made it boring, and the characterization of even the most simplest of mechanics made things feel much more impactful than they actually would’ve seemed to be. I’m excited to dig into a bunch of the back catalog of this endless thousand game long series now that I know more about it, and maybe finally understand what’s going on with that crazy “Rocket Slime” guy everyone’s always talking about.

Also!

So yeah! Go play those games! I also highly recommend Radiant Historia, specifically for the 3DS. It’s a great game that uses time travel in an actually clever and well considered way, and I really enjoyed it for its unique tone and feeling. Crosscode is a pretty good banger from last year too, taking the atmosphere and concepts of an MMO and popping them into a puzzle-filled RPG. Anyways, 2019.

10: Indivisible

Indivisible is by no means a perfect game, but it’s also one that I genuinely had a blast playing for almost the entire time I spent with it. Sure the backtracking got a little annoying, and there was a lot left to be desired in the story department, but I found myself completely unable to put this game down until I beat it which is something that has become increasingly rarer as the years have gone on. Hopefully with future updates inbound, Lab Zero can clean up any of the lingering issues with the game because there really is a lot to like. With a colorful cast, satisfying thwacks, and a whole bunch of womens for me to go “wahow!” at, I think Indivisible was well worth the time I gave it.

9: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I might not be the wildest Castlevania head out there but god damn do I love me Symphony of the Night. With the rough history of Kickstarter-backed spiritual successors, everyone was afraid that Bloodstained might just sputter out and die at release but luckily this wasn’t even close to a Mighty No. 9. There’s so many systems in this game that it sometimes gets overwhelming, but interacting with them and fooling around with exploration and different character builds is still fun in a way that pretty much no other game in the Metroidvania genre has done in years. It was pretty easy to cheese most of the game, but you get to do so by turning into a bunny girl demon so who can possibly say if it’s bad or not? There’s still lots of content coming to this game down the line, and I’ll totes dive back in for some more hoppin’ and choppin’.

8: Kingdom Hearts III

Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought that a Kingdom Hearts game could end up this low on a top ten list, but Kingdom Hearts III really gutted me in a lot of bummerific ways. It was still fun, and it was an outrageous spectacle in the way that I expect Kingdom Hearts to be, but there was just something…off about the whole thing. I don’t know if it was an overfocus on the Disney side of things, a mostly sterile interpretation of those properties from a series that once pit Cloud Strife against Hercules with complete and utter sincerity, but after waiting over ten years for a true blockbuster follow up to Kingdom Hearts II, we got what feels like yet another side game. 

There are moments where Kingdom Hearts III shines, where it delivers on years and years of plot build up and emotionally resonates with the deepest most innocent parts of our brains. Unfortunately for each time of triumph, there’s a handful of “what could have been”s and “what should have been”s. Throw into that the series’ worst handling of female characters to date and damn, I just couldn’t help but shake my head. I still love Kingdom Hearts, and I’m excited to play the DLC, but Kingdom Hearts III deserved better than this.

7: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I like that when i see a boss for the first time now this is how it goeshttps://t.co/aJ00OyZt11 pic.twitter.com/h0NPxAgUIB

— RMT (@horngal) March 29, 2019

When Sekiro is good? It’s easily one of the best games you could ever play in your entire life. Full of blistering high speed high stakes combat- the natural progression of FromSoftware’s design ethos after Bloodborne– this is a game that rewards your mastery of its mechanics more than almost any you or I could name. The fight against Genichiro on the top of the castle towards the middle of the game is one of the best vibe checks in gaming; one that’s patient but demanding. Gradually unraveling the ways you can use your sword to fuck shit up feels sooo satisfying, and the adrenaline you get from slamming your sword into any of the game’s bosses after a long battle feels amazing.

When Sekiro is bad though? It really just bums you all the way out. For a game that succeeds at 1v1 battles, it has a propensity to increase the difficulty by just…tossing in an identical second enemy that you have to contend with. This wouldn’t be a problem if you could use your tools more but all of your tools use up /the same/ currency that doesn’t even regenerate upon death so you always feel like you have to save them rather than actually experiment with them. Sometimes fights go on just a little too long (looking at you final boss), and sometimes they’re just way too short! While I appreciate FromSoft branching out and getting a little wild with their game format, and I think that they mostly pulled it off, I wish they had the courage to not rely on a lot of the trappings people have come to expect from Souls games to complete their package.

6: Death Stranding

God I wish I was the babyhttps://t.co/l3ZVZ9Qk8z pic.twitter.com/sp2Z3IJfEh

— RMT (@horngal) November 22, 2019

Speaking of games I wish weren’t held back by something hey when the hell is Kojima going to let himself have a proper invested editor again? I’m of the mind that when it comes to designing and executing on unique game mechanics Kojima is almost second to none. The man has an incredible way of nailing not only a consistent atmosphere that keeps you engrossed but incredibly wacky and imaginative things to do that no one else would even dream of trying. It’s just a shame he has to hold himself back with his weird hyper specific tastes and mediocre script writing! Why!

MGS V, while being one of my favorite Metal Gear games, already painted a troubling picture for what Kojima considered to be “a good story,” and Death Stranding pretty much followed its exact blueprint. While I loved the core gameplay loop of Death Stranding, the social narrative of creating easier ways for others to play the game alongside you, and the overwhelming and oppressive atmosphere the world cultivates, the core narrative was kind of just a bummer. More than anything it made me feel disappointed in the game as a whole, a cohesive whole brought down by some of the worst D grade TV writing has to offer. 

That said though the gameplay was truly incredible stuff that one would never have expected from a major AAA release. Walking is a big deal that actually matters, combat is a tertiary system you want to mostly avoid, and you spend most of the game building roads and other random structures out in the middle of the wilderness so that you get “likes” which don’t actually do anything! It’s great! When people call Kojima a visionary it’s because of stuff like this, these are really great, unique, and well implemented ideas that make Death Stranding a game like no other. I just hope that for Kojima’s next project he can maybe get someone else to proof his work, that way we can get a whole lot less of Die-Hardman telling us how to recharge a motorcycle’s battery over and over, and more of Die-Hardman telling us how stacking pizza correctly is real important shit.

5: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

There’s not much I can say other than I love Fire Emblem so of course this is here, here are some miscellaneous thoughts. 

• Some of this game’s writing sucks ass but almost all of the character writing is top notch stuff. It relies heavily on tropes, but the way that each member of your house plays off each other means you’re gonna have a hard time not falling in love with all of your rowdy students/soldiers/killing machine. 
• It’s not Fire Emblem Fates: The Incest Olympics! 
• Edelgard is my wife.
  

  4: Disco Elysium

Man we never get any fuckin’ real RPGs anymore! Ever since Mass Effect and the Bioware format in general took to the scene we’ve had to sit by and watch as voiced protagonists and bombastic set pieces limited what could happen in experiences meant to be molded out of various options. While there’s been plenty of stuff going on in the CRPG scene between hits like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin, the combat in those games has always been a huge hill I could never overcome due to various issues and personal sentiments. Thankfully Disco Elysium came, kicked ass as a completely original Role Playing Game, and didn’t make me do a million clickings or strategizings to experience what it had to offer.

I feel like everyone’s said what makes Disco Elysium good by now, but I’m just gonna reiterate that, it’s very good. Kim is one of the best partners in video games, and gradually seeing what kind of person he is over the course of your interactions humanizes him in a way that most writers could only dream. The character building is incredibly unique with a huge slew of unique personality options that most games would never consider “something you spec into.” I don’t want to spoil anymore of this game than what you might’ve seen online but if you love to read and enjoy leftist politics I cannot recommend Disco Elysium enough.

3: Control 

Control Rules https://t.co/eNF4P0fQXO pic.twitter.com/vNhOOyqRcb

— RMT (@horngal) September 1, 2019

I am the hardcore Alan Wake head. I think at Video Game Choo Choo, more than any other website, you will find a lot of Alan Wake heads. With good reason too! Remedy has this incredible style and direction that they put into all of their games that few can even dream of matching. Wearing their influences on their sleeves, Remedy has the courage to do what no one else in the business is even trying to do: Incorporate both musical sequences, and Full Motion Video to full effect in a 2019 big budget title. 

Seeing an SCP game brought to life outside of the clunky vaporware that is Containment Breach is the best shit ever, and having it all be delivered in a similar format to the best television show of all time, Twin Peaks: The Return? Incomparable stuff. Add in a strong female lead who doesn’t rely on any tropes to be sick as hell, a ton of easter eggs about Alan Wake, and some of the most thought out and realistic environmental design that actually encourages you to read signs to figure out where to go next (!!!) and you have a recipe for yet another Remedy classic.

2: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

1: Devil May Cry V

The hype shithttps://t.co/bdm1DWFHsT pic.twitter.com/2VIqxrJRhG

— RMT (@horngal) March 26, 2019

Pullin’ shots – aimin’ dots – Yeah I don’t miss

Branded by Fire – Born in the abyss

Red hot temper – I just can’t resist

All this vengeance inside me

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!

The post Rose’s Top Video Games in The Year of Pandering to Her appeared first on Gamesline.

When it comes to talking about Fire Emblem, the support system is inevitably what comes to the forefront of the discussion. Originally designed as a hidden mechanic to merely buff adjacent characters for story purposes, the conceit gradually evolved more and more with games like Genealogy of a Holy War adding a child-rearing system, and Binding Blade adding customized cutscenes for any given pair of characters. In most recent games, the system has become polished and simple: you put two characters next to each other in battle and over the course of your war campaign they’ll go from begrudging strangers with differences to the best of friends (or maybe more). While not everyone has been a fan of the more Otome style of gameplay this has encouraged, with a focus more on making two characters kiss and joke around instead of the horrors of war, it’s undeniable that the implementation and evolution of Supports have brought Fire Emblem to the acclaim it holds today.

While the series first took a foray into “proper” canonized gay supports with Fire Emblem: Fates, you can go back as early as 2003’s Blazing Blade to see implied same-sex relationships through the characters of Lyn and Florina, as well as Lucius and Raven. Both of these characters have paired endings, where the characters promise to “spend forever together”, or joke about how they’re already an old married couple. These supports, while not mechanically represented the same way heterosexual relationships are, still showcase and promote a healthy homosexual romance. Sacred Stones even goes a bit more blatant, with the characters of Gerik and Joshua having their own paired ending where Joshua basically challenges Gerik to a duel with the goal of convincing him to settle down with him.

With the series’ first 3D releases, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, subtext became even harder to ignore with the main character Ike becoming involved in not one, but two different romantic supports with other men. The primary and most represented in fan content is the bond between Ike and Soren, which was basically made canon through anniversary books released over the last few years. In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn Memorial Book Tellius Recollection: The Second Volume, Ike and Soren are continuously referred to as having “feelings of love” for one another, and even goes so far as to refer to a support interaction where Ike and Soren embrace as “the moment where their two hearts became one” which is like, wow.

The other romance for Ike takes shape in Ranulf, a catboy who has an “extreme fondness” for Ike. Just as with Soren, Ranulf has an ending that changes depending on whether or not he got an A-rank support with Ike. If he does so, he leaves his home after the war to travel the world with Ike. If Ranulf dies at any point during the game, regardless of context, his last thoughts will be of Ike. 

Though neither of these relationships are as vocal as the vast amount of heterosexual options presented throughout both games, I argue that they do not need to be loud to be valid. While there is absolutely an importance in cementing representation of homosexuality on the same playing field as heterosexuality, that doesn’t discount the feelings that these pairings helped create in the people who played these games. Fans made art, music, fiction, and more all about the implications that these relationships tried to get through, and that makes them important in the history of gay content in gaming. 

When 2013’s Fire Emblem: Awakening implemented the old child system of Genealogy of a Holy War alongside a new “S-Rank” system, which let characters get married, it, unfortunately, led to a lot more heteronormativity than the series had started to move away from. Fans, however, were not wont to leave well enough alone and ended up creating a comprehensive fan-hack, which allowed same-sex marriage, while keeping the children. The ROM-hack featured custom written S-Rank dialogue as well, so it was not as if you were simply changing some pronouns in a confession speech. While it’s possible that a hack like this could’ve been created even without the history of homosexuality in Fire Emblem, fans were inspired to and looking for content like this because of what had come before. 

Fire Emblem: Fates had a same-sex hack of its own, but it also had the first “legitimate” gay options for supports. While the unit’s homosexuality (or I guess bisexuality?) was limited to relationships with the player character, women had the choice of marrying Rhajat, while men could romance Niles. For some reason, however, these characters were made version-exclusive like a rare Pokémon, and you could only find Niles in Conquest, and Rhajat in Birthright. On top of this bizarre wrinkle, both characters were represented as twisted murderers and criminals, which, while obviously redeemed over the course of the game, didn’t exactly leave the best impression onto what Intelligent Systems’ impressions of gay people were. 

Outside of the romance options, there were also multiple LGBT-coded characters scattered throughout the teen characters you recruit during the second half of the game. Forrest, the Nohrian Prince Leo’s child, is assigned male at birth but dresses up in frilly dresses and outfits that they sew themselves. While Leo struggles with this at first, he ultimately comes to terms with and respects his child’s choices, even going on to get more involved with them upon realizing that he’s been foisting his own expectations and beliefs upon them. Obviously, this can be interpreted as a trans-narrative, although there is no blatant explanation of such.

The knight Laslow’s daughter Soleil’s entire character revolves around her being unable to stop herself from flirting with every girl she sees. While this is a common trope in a lot of Japanese media, Soleil’s interactions with characters like Ophelia play just like any normal romantic interaction, even ending with the two going out on a date. The most damning (and unfortunate) evidence for Soleil’s homosexuality comes from her supports with the player character. 

In the original Japanese script, Soleil is made to go through “training” to make her stop disliking men and going crazy for women, where she wears a blindfold and is convinced that whoever she’s interacting with is the opposite gender than she would assume. Obviously, this entire scenario ends up seeming a lot like gay conversion therapy, which is not exactly the best thing in the world to randomly feature in any game, let alone when played off as a joke in 2016! While Nintendo changed the events of the support conversations for the English release, they merely changed it to a magical potion instead of a blindfold, which is honestly? Maybe worse! Though even with this egregious stain on her character, she’s become one of the most popular characters in the Fire Emblem fandom, specifically because her homosexuality is so undeniable and endearing.

There are plenty of other characters I haven’t even mentioned too, like the loud and proud Heather from Radiant Dawn, or the later legitimized Leon from Shadows of Valentia. While Fire Emblem has only recently waded into the territory of blatant and mechanically labeled homosexuality, that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had any characters with gay narratives. Outright and heavily supported representation will always be an incredibly important thing to strive for and implement in any form of media, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore or dismiss the legitimacy of the more subtle stories along the way.

The post Fire Emblem: Path of Gaydiance appeared first on Gamesline.

Scott and Rose talk through an extensive 40 min tour of Fire Emblem: Three Houses! My heart breaks as the gang ignores the hilarious Platinum the Trinity in favour of Faust, when discussing randomness in fighing games and the inclusion of Hero in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The gang goes over Street Fighter V announcements, and then talks more about Kage than anyone ever has. We take a plunge into the ever darkening pit of horrible topics because there is RWBY talk! John keeps up updated on post-crash Team Fortress 2. And then Scott curses the very earth with the conception of Binary Domain Gacha!

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @John_Michonski, @horngal, and @ScottBloodborne.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com, via twitter with the hashtag #AskVGCC or into our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 274: Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2 appeared first on Gamesline.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @Solonface, @lvmaeparian, and @John_Michonski.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com, via twitter with the hashtag #AskVGCC or into our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask 

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone !

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 273: ABBA Gachapon appeared first on Gamesline.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @horngal, and @John_Michonski.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com, via twitter with the hashtag #AskVGCC or into our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone !

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 272: Kiryu Teaches Typing appeared first on Gamesline.