This is the first in what will hopefully be a yearly review of the games I’ve played. I’ll be taking a look mostly at the games I enjoyed but I’ll also talk about some of the games I found to be less than good as well.
The Good
Kamiko
I want to start off by talking about a game I got early in the year that I will still sometimes return to. I originally “purchased” Kamiko while it was on sale by using the Gold Points that Nintendo gives out when you purchase other games through the Switch eShop. This decision was by far one of the best I’ve made this year.
Kamiko is a top-down action game with three playable character each with their own unique fighting style. It’s a relatively short game that even on my first playthrough I was able to beat in under an hour. But by then the game already had it’s hooks in me by showing me how much time it took me to complete each stage. My competitive spirit was also strengthened by my pal Qwarq who was also playing the game at the time.
Even if I didn’t have someone to compare times with I’m certain I would have still fell in love with this tiny game. It was well worth every penny I didn’t spend on it.
The Lion’s Song
At the moment of writing this I still haven’t completed more than a half of The Lion’s Song which is a shame. It’s a beautifully rendered pixel art narrative-adventure game that tells four interconnected stories about people living in early 20th Century Austria. I had only made it through the first two stories when another game I played this year stole my time away from it and I still haven’t gone back quite yet.
As a quick aside, the music in this game is probably my favorite of all the games on this list.
Fortnite
What can I say about Fortnite that hasn’t already been said a million times over? I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed playing it, even when I was by myself. There’s just something incredibly fun about parachuting on to an island with 99 other people all wanting to kill you. And playing with friends only makes the game more enjoyable, no matter how much better at it they are than you.
Subsurface Circular
Another narrative-adventure game, this time taking place entirely in a single train car. You play as Theta One One, a robot detective solving other robot’s problems as they board the train. Your main objective is to find out what has been causing the disappearance of other Teks, the game’s name for the advanced AI controlled robots. As you try to uncover the details of the plot you help out other Teks with their problems between train stops.
The mission to find the missing Teks over time grows into a complicated plot of certain Teks wanting to overthrow their human rulers and that’s where this otherwise great game starts to fall apart. The minor characters you help in return for any info they may have are by far the strongest part of this game. Each making Theta One One question their role and purpose in life, as they are one of the few Teks allowed the freedom to do so. This introspection is cut short by the game’s multiple endings not being determined by your actions throughout the game but by a simple choice you make in the end.
If the ending of the game had been a little more thoroughly thought out I don’t think I would have cared so much that the overarching plot of it all is more than a little lackluster.
Hollow Knight
GORB
Octopath Traveler
Octopath is a game that I loved(enough that I stopped playing The Lion’s Song for it).With a likable cast of eight interesting characters, a more stream-lined but engaging combat system borrowed from games the dev team worked on previously, and gorgeous visuals blending 2D pixel art and 3D models in the most satisfying way there’s a lot to love about this game. That’s not to say that it’s without it’s own shortcomings though.
Each character in Octopath Traveler has a their own story that doesn’t at any point crossover with the others, outside of small vignettes reminiscent of the skits from the Tales of Series from Bandai Namco. This severely lessens the weight of some of the individual stories, such as the apothecary Alfyn. In a later part of Alfyn’s story he heals a man he later finds out to be a murderer and thief. By the end of the story segment Alfyn questions whether or not everyone that comes to him in need of help is deserving of it, which would be a powerful moment not just for Alfyn but for Therion, a career thief, and Primrose, a woman that is on a revenge mission to murder those that killed her father. This is however never addressed in the game and instead Alfyn decides that he should just help out everyone anyways.
While the story element of Octopath may not have lived up to my hopes and expectations the battle system more than made up for it at first. The combatis a continuation of the Final Fantasy game Four Heroes of Light that was evolved in the Bravely Default series, featuring a job system and the ability to reserve energy to do larger more flashy attacks that deal more damage. This helps keep combat fresh and exciting for a long time as you unlock more sub-jobs for the characters to try out.
Perhaps the strongest feature of Octopath Traveler is it’s style. It utilizes both wonderful pixel art for characters and 3D models for everything else, almost as an inversion of classic PS1-era Final Fantasy games. The visuals had me worried at first and took a little time to get used to but I can’t think of any other way I would have wanted the game to look now.
This was a contender for Game of the Year for me but due to it’s story problems I’m unsure if I can give it that title, it still remains a great game but it’s problems are made just a little too apparent for me to overlook.
Romancing SaGa 2
Even with this remaster for the Switch, Romancing SaGa 2 is an old game and it shows. It’s by far one of the most needlessly obtuse RPGs I’ve ever played. And I loved every single minute of it. The game’s core mechanic is the ability to pass on your magical and physical prowess to your descendants in a multi-generational battle against the Seven Heroes. A group of former heroes turned evil generals seeking to control the world.
That isn’t the only interesting mechanic in the game. The combat in Romancing SaGa 2 at first seems like your typical turn-based battle system of the time but after a few battles you’ll begin to notice that your characters don’t level up, not really. The game instead of doling out experience points at the end of battle awards each character points for the weapons or skills they used, or even for taking damage. These points increase certain skill levels of the characters, be it their speed, specific weapon damage, magic damage, or even their health. this paired with the ability to change the formation your party takes in battle allows for a lot of depth and planning Though the game will never outright tell you any of this.
There are also a wide range of classes that you are able to recruit to your cause, from the standard Mages and Fighters to more unique classes like Salamanders or Moles. Each one bringing something unique to your party. Some of these classes are completely optional and missable, like the thief, which is something the game will also never mention.
Outside of this though the game’s story and music are fairly normal for the time it was made. Overall it’s a very strange mix of cool elements, very bland by the book story-telling, and a steep learning curve.
Nintendo Switch Online — Nintendo Entertainment System
This isn’t exactly a game per se but I have spent a lot of time playing some of the individual games in it, either for the first time or revisiting them years after I last played them.
As a collection that is being continually updated monthly, the library is still currently lacking. It has some stand out classics like The Legend of Zelda, Adventures of Lolo, Super Mario Bros. 3, and even River City Ransom. But it also includes some lesser titles like Mighty Bomb Jack and Solomon’s Key.
The ability to play all of these games online with a friend, even single player games, is a much appreciated feature that is sadly hampered by the Switch’s own online issues. Even with that as an issue the service more than makes up for it with something incredibly simple. The ability to clap a set of hands you controller when you’re not the one in control of the game. Allowing you to taunt your friends for every mistake they make, no matter how small. This simple feature reminds me a lot of Nintendo’s other recent ventures into co-op games, where you are able to sabotage your friends and yourself.
I’m glad this service exists but it’s still lacking one thing to make me really love it. So please Reggie, just put Zelda II on NSO-NES already.
The Bad
Moonlighter
Moonlighter promises to be a Zelda-like with procedurally generated dungeons and a shop-keeping subgame. And while it does deliver on this promise, maybe it really shouldn’t have.
When I first started up Moonlighter I was impressed, the game played amazingly. I was dodging attacks and beating things up with some challenge but never enough that it felt unfair. But as the game progressed I noticed that things were going down much faster than before, even in later dungeons. The few bosses there were stopped being able to put up a fight. At some point just playing through the game normally I started to out-pace all the enemies and for the ones I couldn’t easily take down with the sword I was using I’d just stand back and shoot with arrows from across the room completely safe. If this itself wasn’t a big enough problem it was compounded by the fact that on every floor of the dungeon there would be a hotspring that would heal you to full multiple times before becoming unusable and that’s before being able to use the potions you could bring in with you. By the end of the game I was so strong I just stood next to the final boss and mashed the A button until he was dead, never worrying about my own health.
The combat becoming easier as the game progressed wasn’t the only issue I had run into though. As I went through the game I would periodically upgrade all my equipment at once, and I’d always go with the fastest armor so I could get in close to hit with my sword. But I noticed that the faster I became the more the game started to break. I’d start walking and soon I’d just be floating over a pit or enemies would start clipping through objects when I’d move. These bugs were what ended up providing the challenges for me in the late game, as they got worse I started having to come up with strategies to work around them. For pits, I’d never walk around them instead I would use the dodge roll to avoid getting stuck floating above them. Enemies phasing through objects tended to be a little harder to counter as they’d each have to have different strategies based on their attacks and movement patterns.
The other half of the game, the shop-keeping, wasn’t free of problems either. The core of the shop keeping game was finding the middle ground between making the most money on an item and keeping the price low enough that your customers wouldn’t get angry for being over-charged for it. This was fun and interesting at first but as you progress through the game “Collectors” would start appearing in your shop and they would buy items for whatever price you listed them for without the game telling you if it was a satisfactory price. This was made even more difficult by another bug that stopped my in-game item guide from updating when I’d sell something so if I didn’t catch what one person bought for what price or how they felt about it I would have to start get more and watch it even harder.
The final issue I had with the game is that while this game was clearly heavily inspired by 2D Zelda games in it’s bid to be different and unique by having you manage a shop and the same time it lost a lot of the variety that makes Zelda dungeons fun. All of the dungeons in Moonlighter used what felt like the same exact layouts for the individual rooms with little variation, and due to them needing to be gone through multiple times they didn’t feature any puzzles of any kind. So they felt a lot more like they were based on Binding of Isaac than Zelda.
Final Thoughts
There were a lot of good games this year, many more than I listed here. Many more than I even played. I think next year I’m going to be a little more discerning in my choices so I don’t make quite as many mistakes, I’ll also hopefully keep more detailed notes on what I liked or didn’t like about the games I played to make this much easier.
