10. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

This was a hard one for me and putting it into text is even harder. Because I love Wo Long. The core of the game is both its greatest strength and weakness at the same time. Wo Long feels really good to play. Being able to parry every single hit in the game turns every fight into a learning experience. Learn the pattern, parry every hit, and counter. It feels incredible when it’s at its best, but unrewarding and boring when you’ve gotten a handle on the systems. It’s why I’m sad that I came away feeling almost nothing after most stages. The first boss requires you to learn the mechanics, and then Lu Bu, the first time you fight him, requires you to master them, and gives you what might be my favorite boss fight in action game history. 

It rules.

It rules so much and it makes the rest of the game around it suffer in comparison. The highs of the game are so high, but for the most part, it’s a forgettable slog with only a few standout levels that really don’t capture the magic that Nioh had for me. It also does the towering house sized boss thing that Team Ninja games have always done and good god it’s absolutely miserable every time one of those comes up. Just utterly terrible boss fights that really take away from the experience of the game and I would rather have 20 more of the piss-easy one-attempt bosses that made up 90% of the game than any of these. Even at higher difficulty, the game felt easy, which led to me to eventually fall off completely. I’m really glad for my first experience, but the more time that passes, the further it’s just kinda flopped down my list and made my subsequent time just poking at mostly mediocre DLC offerings feel unrewarding and led to it almost losing its place completely on my list. I know this all sounds really negative, but I do still think this is a great starting point for Team Ninja action games that you can use to branch out into much better games like Stranger of Paradise and Nioh 2.

9. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

That’s right, it’s back in the list. After last year I really had to take a step back and reevaluate my place with the game. I was completely raid-pilled and burned myself out completely. I was getting ready to just uninstall and be done with it, but I decided to do something I’d never thought of doing before: try new things. Lo and behold, it worked. Fishing became like my side activity while I edit podcasts, and instead of FFXIV being the main game I played in my free time, it became something of a side game. I’d raid with friends in what was a solid final tier, but I mostly just poked at a lot of the stuff I had neglected before in favor of raiding. Suddenly, the game was fun again, and I was in a much better place in my relationship to the game. Now when I raid, it’s pretty much only to learn new fights, or help other people clear them. It’s nice to be in a good space with Final Fantasy again, it’s nice to be excited for the new expansion, and I really hope this feeling continues.

8. Game of The Generation Nioh 2

I’M SORRY I PUT ANOTHER 200 HOURS INTO IT I CAN STOP ANYTIME I WANT I SWEAR.

7. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

I enjoyed Stranger of Paradise in my initial playthrough, but I never went back to it for the DLC until this year after I finished Wo Long. Well, I finally went back in and polished off all of the DLC that I’d missed out on and yeah, this game is fantastic. The game flow feels so good when you get going, and the added jobs make the complete package a stellar game. I like the stage design a ton, and the DLC offerings led to some really fun fights that left me on the edge of my seat, and felt incredibly rewarding when I finally finished it all off. Just a fantastic action game from start to finish with DLC that added a lot to the package and genuinely felt really awesome. 

I’m still disappointed that it’s all locked behind the CHAOS difficulty when the initial campaign offered a story difficulty, but their attempt to mitigate that actually might have made it worse. They just give you a set of armor that reduces your XP gain by 30%, but makes you invulnerable, and that’s just kinda stupid. Even if I were playing on easy, I still want to play the game. Like yes, it lets you experience the last bits of the story it’s telling, but removing all the challenges in a game like this when there was already a well-balanced “story” difficulty is just a mistake. There are a lot of other issues with the way the DLC was designed, but the overall feel and experience of finishing off the story gave me a really good feeling with some incredibly rewarding fights against classic bosses like Omega and Gilgamesh. It’s always nice to hear Jack tell people to shut the fuck up mid-monologue.

6. Spider-Man 2

There aren’t many open-world games that nail traversal, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t absolutely kill it with this one. A fantastic-playing game from start to finish, and while the narrative left a little to be desired at points, as an overall story it was comic books as hell and something I enjoyed. It felt like a contained event comic with each part being in a different book, and I can vibe with that. You had the Miles issues and the Peter issues and the stuff in between really just felt like filler you’d see depending on who you were controlling. I played most of the open-world stuff as Miles so I felt like I got a whole lot more from him than most of my friends who spent more of their time as Peter. It was interesting seeing people talk about how nothing of a character Miles was whereas I was, having a relatively even experience. I’m not saying their criticism is invalid; when I think about it, yeah, a lot of that critique is a pretty good read on the overall flow of the narrative making Peter feel more important, but it really worked for me in the end as a good passing of the torch.

5. Octopath Traveller 2

Imagine a company taking every single criticism of a game and addressing all of that for the sequel. I would’ve never expected Square Enix to be that company. I came into this expecting, well, not much, and it ended up being at the top of my list for a significant chunk of my year. I still absolutely love the battle system of this game and with all the little tweaks and new characters, this is miles ahead of the first game. Just an absolutely fantastic time with a good story, great characters, good puzzle gimmicks, and just a far more streamlined experience had me put a metric ton of time in the game and I’m sure it would be higher on this list if I had completely finished it. Who knows, maybe it will make a return next year when I really dig back in to finish.

4. Baldur’s Gate 3

I thought for sure when I finished my first playthrough that this would be top 2. No way anything could take it over. So many great moments, so many great characters, so many things I just really kept coming back to. I took 10 characters through the first 2 chapters and each gave me a completely different experience. I thought that was so cool. Something you really can only do with a game like this. But then something happened, it just kind of lost its spark. Maybe it was just that I burned myself out, or maybe it was all the updates that in the end, felt like they made it a bit less interesting of a game. I still really love what I got out of it, but I also feel like the more I go back, the less I want to keep going back.

3. Coral Island

I’m going to give this game some real flack despite it being near the top of my list for the year. I put 100+ hours into an unfinished farming sim that felt that way. I’ve appreciated the constant updates and bug fixes, but the game still did not feel like a 1.0 version. Having an entire mermaid kingdom with no real interactions felt bad, and I’m extremely excited for 1.1, but as something being called a 1.0 build? It should not have been called that, because Coral Island is still not in a state where that label fits. That being said, what is here is absolutely stellar. The ability to change the speed of the daily timer is a must-have in games like this, same with the ability to have monsters only attack on aggro if you just aren’t feeling like you want to do combat. The daily grind gameplay loop is very satisfying thanks to the aforementioned ability to change the daily timer. No plans for the day? You can just speed up the timer, do your daily chores, and it’s the next day in 5 minutes. You want to explore the dungeon? Cut the timer speed in half so you can guarantee you can at least get to the next floor checkpoint. It’s such a nice change that it really takes the pressure off of the daily grind which is part of why I can’t play Stardew Valley without significant mods to make some of those quality of life changes that Coral Island has out of the box. Plus, now that they’ve fixed the absolute disaster that was the console release, this is worth buying for any fan of these kinds of games

2. Alan Wake 2

Remedy Games has been trying to nail the gameplay mixed with live action stuff for a very long time now. Every game they’ve made since Max Payne has been a mix of mediums and it’s been really cool to watch them grow. They came close with Control, but this is where they really perfected it. You can show everyone “We Sing” and they will be blown away by the way the band movements lead you in the right direction in really cool ways, as every screen has something to watch. But it’s not even the best part of the game. That’s what’s wild. You can show someone one thing to get them to play, but there are things that come later which blow it out of the water. Just a simply incredible experience from start to finish, and one I can’t wait to go back to for more.

1. WitchSpring R

Game of the Year for me is always about comfort. Sometimes it’s about fun, but sometimes it’s just something hitting at the right place at the right time to give you exactly what you need. That’s what happened with Witchspring R when my friends Zesh and Nico just wouldn’t stop talking about this game. Telling me I needed to play it. I’d peek into a stream and see him reacting to things completely out of context and just think it’s a cute game but whatever. But they pushed, and they pushed, and so I added it to the list of intros I was going to try for the 24 hour stream. I was interested from what I had seen, but some of the other games held much more appeal to me from the way they were made. I mean this was a remake of a South Korean phone game. There is no way this is going to be good right? 

Then I started and I was hooked. I just skipped past the 2 other games I had planned for the rest of my segment and kept playing. It bled right into my next stream and suddenly I had thrown Octopath Traveller 2 off of my stream plans and it was all Witchspring. I mean how can you not love a game about a character named Pieberry who named herself that because the only memories she had were that she loved Pie and Strawberries. It’s adorable. From just a surface level of description it sounds like the most generic JRPG you could ever play. In the first few hours, the thing that kept me going was just a really fun battle system with rewarding progression, but the story was just kind of in the back of my mind. It set up mysteries that I wanted answers to because I thought it would be a cute and wholesome time…

And then you leave the woods. The game continues to be charming, introducing tons of characters both good and back who all have unique and interesting characters. You make friends, your friends stab you in the back and you keep moving on. Suddenly the thing keeping me going isn’t the fact that it’s cute, it’s that I’m in the role of the most optimistic person imaginable and terrible things are happening all around her. I was hooked and the game did not let go until I finished. Long 10 hour sessions of just needing to know what would happen next. Would Pieberry find her mother and find out who she truly is? Would any of the people who had betrayed her in the name of the Pope have a face turn? What is even going on? Oh god why am I crying, how dare this game make me cry from genuine feelings, it’s supposed to be a cute game about a girl named Pieberry who loves pie and strawberries. 

I really don’t think I’ve played a game with such near perfect pacing until now. It’s designed with an amount of side content that never wears out its welcome, and there wasn’t a single part that I could look back on and say “Hey, they should really have cut this out” or “Hey, they really should have expanded this a bit.” So many games will add optional bosses, and this one does that, but at no point did I feel like I was having to grind anything to get to that point. There was a little bit of going back to areas to get a few materials for upgrades I wanted, but even then, finishing 100% of the game, crafting every single upgrade, took me less time than one zone of some games today. And I’m not saying that’s bad, it’s just this was the exact kind of time sink that I needed last year, The kind of thing I could play through when I was constantly traveling from convention to convention across both sides of the country. It’s not often a game makes you feel rewarded for the entirety of your time, but this one where every second of my playtime felt like it meant something, like I was always progressing something and that’s why it’s my Game of the Year. I may never come back now that I’ve finished the hard mode DLC they added, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t leave its mark in my memory more than anything else I played.

The post Lorelai’s Top 10 Games of 2023 appeared first on Gamesline.

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.

The post Lorelai’s Final Fantasy XIV Free Top 6 Games of 2022 appeared first on Gamesline.

In the news, Mario Kart Tour dropped it’s gatcha system, Halo Infinite dropped it’s plans for split screen co-op, and Steam dropped Domina after it’s lead developer went on another transphobic tirade. We’ve got a new Assassin’s Creed coming to us and a new monkey coming our way in Pokémon. Finally Diablo: Immortal cracked down on people buying stolen currency and now some players are experiencing orb debt which I just want to write the words orb debt one more time.

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In the news, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl got an update, Supermassive games is making a new star studded game called The Quarry, and Sony showed off the incredibly not good looking Hogwarts Legacy game. It also turns out that a lot of indie studios suck to work at with more stories of workplace abuse from companies like Ori and the Blind Forest developer Moon studios. Along with that we go over what happened over the last few weeks with Artesian Builds losing everything because their CEO is a nightmare person.

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

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The post VGCC Episode 388: Chaos Check In appeared first on Gamesline.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @mavsplaniamania 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 our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

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The post VGCC Episode 387: A.I. the Chaos Files appeared first on Gamesline.

Scott and Elvie take their break from manning the bar to talk about some dang games. Elvie’s making some embarrassing shopping mistakes, Scott is flabbergasted by Halo Infinite, our collective experience so far with VA-11 HALL-A, and we read a couple Essays of Empathy. Plus, the hottest news which we’ve poured into a glass and are lighting on fire, including: what’s going on with FFXIV Endwalker, Kickstarter’s tripping all over it’s nuts for the blockchain, the Vodeo Games union, CD Projekt Red, Bungie, FF7R, more NFT bullshit, and more!

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @scottblah, and @lvmaeparian.

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The post VGCC Episode 383: Rugrats: The New Class: Gamer Edition appeared first on Gamesline.

Plus, the Animal Crossing Direct, Pazio has a union, NFTs are getting owned here and there, and Paimon fucks up.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @scottblah, @mavsplaniamania, and @elviemaeparian

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The post VGCC Episode 376: The Jackbox Party Podcast appeared first on Gamesline.

While huge Final Fantasy XIV fans were perhaps expecting a few more updates on Endwalker and others were more expectant to hear about Square’s more iconic properties—like new information on Final Fantasy XVI—we absolutely got neither of those things! Instead, Square Enix decided to present us with a gauntlet of titles that seemed to have no cohesion to each other and not even the allure to keep our attention on them. That is to say, not everything was terrible—and some reveals have yielded some rather unexpected reception!—but was this really a Square Enix show when it felt more like a Marvel one? Even Balan could have not saved this.

According to (probably) some philosopher I cannot immediately cite right now, to feel pain is to feel human, and at least that pain has brought us all together.

Join Not!Chris Pratt and Friends in Eidos-Montréal’s Guardians of the Galaxy

This is pretty self-explanatory. Rumors of a Guardians of the Galaxy video game have been swirling around for some time now, and Marvel is certainly not stopping any time soon to expand their branches out into every single piece of media ever to secure their legacy in our pop culture. It is coming to all consoles (except the Switch) on October 26. The problem: a huge quarter of Square Enix’s presentation was dedicated to this game alone. With the added issue of having way too much in-game dialogue for the sake of needing to crack a joke every minute, I think I will let the footage they presented speak for itself.

Freed From Their Mobile Prison, Final Fantasy I–VI Will Also Be Playable Through Steam

A lot of Square’s ports of their titles into portable form of their big mainline titles are bad. Like real bad. As part of their new “Pixel Remaster Series” venture, they have announced that the first six mainline Final Fantasy games are now getting new remasters across not only mobile platforms, but also on Steam! It is great to revisit older titles when they are no longer as easily accessible, but hopefully Square’s attempt to do so does not suck this time.

And Many Years Later, Legend of Mana Gets a Shiny New Coat of Paint Too

This is also pretty neat! Legend of Mana is also getting its own remaster treatment on June 24 for the PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

I Don’t Know Who is Still Torturing Themselves Playing Avengers, But Wow, Here’s An Update I Guess

Although not particularly new information even for Square Enix’s own presentation, Marvel’s Avengers is getting more content, one of them being the official Black Panther update. (Again. This is not new. Yet they dedicated maybe a good several minutes on this?)

I Thought Square Enix No Longer Owns Hitman, But Here’s Hitman Sniper: The Shadows

Entering now the live-service title portion of the showcase, Hitman Sniper: The Shadows is a “free-to-play” mobile spinoff that takes place in a totally different world distinct from the franchise without the staple protagonist, Agent 47. Pick your assassin; you now follow a new cast of colorful characters without little much else known about how this game will actually work.

Babylon’s Fall Literally Looks Like Everything Else

A couple of more live-service games later, Babylon’s Fall is PlatinumGames’ new title to their library that is–that’s right!–a co-op live-service title that looks awfully generic compared to many other fantasy titles of its sort out there right now. Although speculation on this game may have been initially eager, the allure of what this could be is completely lost with its utterly boring visuals and barely unique gameplay, despite boasting it will have elements similar to Nier: Automata. 

Life is Strange: True Colors Shows That, Damn, Being An Empath Is Hard Amirite

After announcing that the original Life is Strange is getting a “remaster” by simply adding a filter over it, the third game in the series, True Colors, had some spotlight showing off more gameplay. Singer-songwriter mxmtoon had a brief moment to vouch for the game, providing the singing vocals to our main protagonist. For a game that seems to depend on the concept of color-coding emotions, hopefully that doesn’t shut out a decent number of people in our population from playing this on September 10.

I WAS TELEPORTED INTO A JRPG WORLD AND HAVE TO NOW KILL CHAOS! (Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin)

Rumors of a “Final Fantasy slash Nioh” hybrid of sorts have also been circulating around some time, and that ridiculous prophecy has been finally fulfilled in the presentation of Strange of Paradise: Final Fantasy. Admittedly this was the most interesting title that stood out to me in the whole show. But admittedly, this was also the most interesting thing for all the wrong reasons.

You can check out the memes for yourself: If the beloved boyband cast of Final Fantasy XV could be compared to the models for Abercrombie & Fitch, we have downgraded to the men’s clearance section at the Gap. Although there is promise with the gameplay shown of this rather surreal world, this juxtaposition with our rather generic male archetypes had little to no rationale offered to us as to why they are in this setting. There is a theory that this may be of a certain flavor set to the isekai genre, in which our rather very normal group of men were probably transported into this fantastical world by accident (coincidentally sharing a title with an unrelated manga). With the appearance of a significant antagonist of the first Final Fantasy, is this going to be a canonical prequel to the very first title in this huge franchise? We currently do not have answers to that and many other things, but as far as I know, Jack really wants to kill chaos.

The post E3 2021 Day 4.5/2 Days – Square Enix Presents’ (Sloppy) Showcase appeared first on Gamesline.