This is on gamepass btw
Whaaaa? Incredible!
Is it good? I almost downloaded it the other day.
Deedlit? Yeah it’s good, coincidentally I just finished it this morning. It’s relatively short for a modern one of these but that’s not really a negative being able to play it through in 6 hours or so. It’s very Castlevania, though a bit heavier on the spell casting.
Man, I really need to rewatch Record of Lodoss War. And I guess Grancrest is the new hotness in that property.
Another one with Guardians of the Galaxy at the top.
Hey, someone noticed Beast Breaker!
Congrats! That’s your company’s game, right? That has to feel good.
This has a couple of games not on anyone else’s list. In fact, for one of them I guarantee it’s not on anyone’s list because it’s not available to buy. That’s cheating!
For Team True Achievements, the Games of the Year (two of them have the same GOTY top pick as Ars Technica):
Haha, yeah thanks! I’m glad amongst the GOTY lists people are also making Overlooked lists!
I came here to give a mention to Adios! While I think the game does lack polish—the stilted animation is most notable—Adios’ narrative is one I responded to the most this year. Genuinely the most affecting voice acting I’ve heard in any game, and I can count the characters on one hand.
While it may have come out in 2019 in Japan, it was only localised this year, so I’m allowing it: Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is the most fun I had with a game all year. I think Falcom have struggled in the past with having a bit too much padding, likely spurned by a stretched budget. But Ys IX is all-killer, no-filler, baby (not to say Falcom doesn’t have time to play—there is a whole game mode that plays like a one-man reverse MOBA. It’s weird). It makes me think of Tom’s review of Fenyx Rising. While I feel like by a certain point I had seen pretty much everything Fenyx had to offer me, long since had it grown stale, Monstrum Nox constantly surprised and delighted me until I reached the very end, leaving me excited for the possibilities for the next instalment, both from mechanical and story-telling perspective.
But the only other game I adored this year was Balan Wonderworld. So what the hell do I know!
A bit of a different Top 10.
Wow, I started all TEN of those last week! Impressively pretty, but I’m not sure I’m seeing a hook beyond that.
This Best of 2021 list put a new game on my radar: The Legend of Tianding is a battle platformer with a cool aesthetic and a unique early-20th C Taiwan setting. Turns out it’s on Epic, so with the coupon, I’ve been playing it tonight and it’s GREAT. The combat is good, if a tad stiff, but it makes up for it with some unique moves, like the ability to lasso any enemy below half health with your sash, stealing their weapon, which then you get to use for some number of attacks. Just in the first level, I think I got to use about eight or ten different NPC weapons.
I mentioned it in passing in the Metroid-vania thread, but it isn’t really a Metroid-vania. Theres only a tiny bit of character progression, and the levels are linear. The thing it’s most like that I’ve played is Mark of The Ninja, but that’s rough comparison because it doesn’t have that signature slowdown.
TianDing also has a great and generally unexplored setting: Japanese occupied colonial Taiwan. It’s got a lot of familiar elements, but also has entirely it’s own style.
My biggest complaint is that it feels a bit incomplete. You see most of the game in the first hour because it doesn’t really add new elements, and the storyline feels a bit truncated, like there was a 3rd act that’s kind of missing. Like, the menu makes it look like you can upgrade your sash, but you never actually do.
Overall, I agree though, its very cool and worth checking out.
Aaaaaaand Eurogamer finally gets the top game right:
Oof, these top ten lists make it crystal clear that this has been a bad year for PC games of the type I actually care about. I’m going to struggle to come up with 5 games, I think, come the Quarterlies. Right now all that springs to mind is Wildermyth, Below Zero, and Riftbreaker (which I’m a little annoyed with at the moment - damn random events). I really need to find some time to play Wrath of the Righteous.