I think I played more new games at or around release date this year than I have since I was writing about them professionally. It’s been kinda nice after some years in the wilderness.
I think the reason these threads start now is because all the big releases are over by the first week of December. It’s rare to get any surprises before January 1.
Not sure what is my favorite of 2017 yet though obviously Breath of the Wild has the inside line. I just played Nex Machina for the first time last night and that is awesome.
Ah, that explains why I’ve never heard of it. I enjoyed JRPGs back in the 16-bit era but since then they just make me feel like Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon. Thanks for the info though!
Final Fantasy is actually a really apt comparison, insofar as a couple of Tales of games are direct sequels, and Berseria is technically a prequel?? to the last game in the series, Zestiria (but being set hundreds of years in the past, it’s mostly just cutesy little winks and nudges), but overall, each entry in the series is unique. Berseria would be a great jumping-on point. Symphonia is also one of the best-regarded games in the series’ history, and the recent PC adaptation of the PS3 port of the Gamecube original is pretty playable even today!
While that’s true, Tales of Berseria gets really dark. There is a certain point in the game that is nearly pitch black, in a way. And I love the game for that. It has plenty of light-hearted moments and all, and by the end there’s plenty of hope, but it’s really intense in a way other Tales games don’t seem to be. Or at least that’s what I hear, because I’ve only played Zestiria and Berseria so far (and a little bit of Symphonia).
Yeah, I heard it had one of the more mature plots in the series. TBH the systemic racism themes in Legendia were pretty grim, but still, the core of the game was hopeful and positive overall.
I do have Tales of Vesperia on my backlog for the 360. Here’s the plan: If they add it to BC for Xbox One, I’ll try it out. If I love it, then I’ll get Tales of Berseria. :)
Tales games (and I haven’t played Berseria yet) are, for me, the baseline adequate JRPG. None of them are really bad. None of them are all-timers (maybe Symphonia? but I even hesitate on that). They are all competent, well-executed, and do all of the little genre stuff that some of us enjoy and that a lot of people loathe about JRPGs. If I don’t have something I’d rather be playing and I want a JRPG fix, there’s always a Tales game to spin up and play for fifty or sixty hours. Japanese comfort food.
NieR: Automata - My only release-day full-price purchase of the year, and an easy pick for #1. B-tier Platinum combat is still way above what everybody else is doing, and the story and music carry the rest of the experience.
Cryptark - Really fun mix of Galak-Z with a neat planning layer, though the difficulty curve is a bit out of whack.
Antihero - Neat async duel boardgame. Keep meaning to get back into this, and will probably double-dip on the mobile version when it arrives.
Horizon: Zero Dawn - I’m only a few hours into this, but enjoying it quite a bit so far. Surprised it isn’t getting more mentions here after all the buzz earlier in the year.
2017 Misses
Monster Slayers - Bought into the forum effect hype, but it just never felt very well-tuned to me, with the bulk of most runs being dull and easy.
Pinball FX3 - Still enjoyable because it’s the same set of tables I know and love, but a missed opportunity in many ways, between the stuttering performance on my 1070, the clunky interface for tournaments, and the idea that what pinball was really missing all these years was grinding for experience points.
Pre-2017 games that I really enjoyed in 2017
Steamworld: Heist
Leap of Fate
Brigador
Hex: Shards of Fate
Shovel Knight
Waiting to play
Breath of the Wild
Mario Odyssey
Mario + Rabbids
(why yes, I do have a Switch sitting under the Christmas tree.)
I feel like this wouldn’t be a bad time of year to start the quarterlies, provided they stay open until week 2 or 3 of January and we allow edits without issue. Around this time, as Scott pointed out, people start thinking about their Game of the Year, a bunch of GotY lists start coming out, people are reading them to figure out which games to play, etc. So let everyone start laying down this sort of talk and then put in their votes as they wish. Of course, having one thread be the discussion thread and have it start early, i.e this thread, and then having a separate thread that links this one and then only really collects votes, that might not be a bad idea either.
2017 Guilty Pleasure
Fire Emblem Heroes - Probably sucked up more hours than anything else on my list, despite my conflicted feelings about it, just by virtue of being so easy to slot in 5 minutes here and there between other stuff or while watching TV. The monetization model taints the whole experience, but the bite-sized self-contained portrait-mode tactical battles are what I want out of mobile gaming.
I tried it twice at different points in the year and it just bounced off me, but I downloaded it again a few weeks ago and have played it every day since.
My list is usually filled with PC games and indies. It is not this year. It was a weird and awesome year where my gaming patterns changed dramatically, as much because of the Switch as anything else. It doesn’t take the top spot, though:
Top 5
Persona 5 - This game is just so freaking good. The character design is amazing across party members, NPCs, and enemies. The soundtrack is an excellent mix of orchestral and J-pop, and I am not someone who is normally into J-pop. I get that some people don’t love the ‘traditional’ JRPG combat, but IMO the best turn-based implementations still work out the best for both combat tactics and game flow versus the alternatives (two of which make appearances below!). There is probably a little bit of fat to trim, but not that much, honestly: the best version of this game is maybe 80 hours instead of 90, but it’s crisp and well paced, especially once you get out of the intro (where the killer start of the story masks how long it takes the game to open up most of the systems… the first time through, at least).
Super Mario Odyssey - The best thing I can say about this is that it lived up to the expectations that I had as soon as I heard “it’s more in the Mario 64 style”. The main story portion of the game is WAY too easy: I understand what Nintendo is doing and why, but they moved the needle too far in that direction. The minute-to-minute gameplay, the design of the worlds, and all the cool stuff that opens up in the postgame all make up for that. I also could have lived with, like, half as many moons and a little more focus - though for some reason I minded it less than I did the shrines in Zelda, which were kind of the same problem.
Metroid: Samus Returns - I didn’t realize how much I missed an actual 2D Metroid game. In a world chock full of metroidvanias, the real thing still has a little bit of extra magic. It’s hard to say much more about this because it is exactly what you think it should be.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - You know, for a FF game that I’ve now gotten 75% of the way through three times without finishing, I have a really high opinion of 12. I might even come back and finish it this time! Whether or not I do, the remaster adds quite a bit of substance with the class system and other general fixes. The Boss Rush mode (or whatever it’s called) is also a fun addition. I think this is a flat-out better game than the next entry on the list, which I probably will finish, but for whatever reason I always peter out in the home stretch.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - I… am not sure this is really that good? I loved the first one for what it did with the world, the story, the characters, and the combat/systems. I still like the world a lot! The characters lean a lot more on JRPG stereotypes this time around, I am 45 hours in and not close to knowing what’s really going on with the story, and the combat really clicks for boss-type fights at the expense of taking about 4x as long as it should to dispatch normal enemies. And yet I still keep coming back, even after a crash (!) in a game that has basically no autosave (!!) cost me several hours. I need to keep helping my Masterpon.
Game that I will love when I get to it, but I couldn’t play another JRPG so shortly after P5
Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd - I’ll take another opportunity to pimp this series, even if this is the one of the weirder entries. If you’re into JRPGs and haven’t played this series, give it a go.
I hope they’re still making these when I retire so I can get to one eventually, because I think I’d really like them
Etrian Odyssey 5 - the last one I played was the first one for the non-3-DS. I feel like by now they’ve probably evolved enough that I should get back in and play one. Maybe if they get the next one on to the Switch!
Favorite old game I played in 2017 (h/t @TimJames)
Fantasy General! 1996 and it still holds up! Frankly, the graphics work better than anything hex-based from the last decade. Top-notch 2D all the way.
Other Random Stuff
Haven’t played but hope to: Nioh, Nier: Automata, Berseria, Mario + Rabbids, Has Been Heroes, Steamworld Dig 2
Really liked but waiting for the iOS version to buy it again and play it some more: Antihero
Fine but didn’t love for reasons we’ve already beaten to death in the appropriate thread: Breath of the Wild
Mobile time-waster of choice that gets zero thought as to “playing a game”: Gems of War
Man, GTA V is a beast and I can’t believe that even a decade after Modern Warfare COD’s still sitting comfortably at the top of the charts. I’m surprised Mario didn’t make the list, but I expect it’ll have a long tail.
@Scotch_Lufkin, great write-up! I couldn’t agree more with you about BOTW. Playing it really took me back to when I was kid, and could still be surprised by games. I’m so grateful to have experienced that magical feeling again as an adult.
